


Out There

by DiscordantWords



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Aliens, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - X-Files Fusion, Case Fic, Coma, First Kiss, Government Conspiracy, M/M, Mutants, No seriously a lot of UST, Pining John, Pining Sherlock, Slow Burn, This is the X files they basically wrote the book on UST, UFOs, UST, casefic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-15
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-08-22 11:51:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 131,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8284817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscordantWords/pseuds/DiscordantWords
Summary: FBI Special Agent John Watson, medical doctor and army veteran, is assigned to assist eccentric genius Sherlock Holmes with paranormal investigations on the X-Files project.This is a fusion with The X-Files, written for the Fall TV Season Challenge.





	1. FBI's Most Unwanted (Part 1)

**Author's Note:**

> **  
> **  
> [Beautiful artwork created by Khorazir!](https://khorazir.tumblr.com/post/157373310748/i-want-to-believe-and-hips-before-hands)  
>   
> 
> *
> 
> I've never done a fusion before, but this challenge looked like irresistible fun, so here I am. And, I mean, if ever there were a project I feel like I was born to work on, this is the one. 
> 
> I've tried very hard not to recreate Sherlock or The X-Files wholesale here, although there will of course be bits that are familiar. I may or may not have been successful, but it's been a fun and challenging writing exercise to engage in. 
> 
> Erm. No real knowledge of the X-Files is needed to enjoy this, I hope. I played really fast and loose with the overall XF mythology, which never really made all that much sense at the best of times. I took elements of it, messed around a bit with the chronology, and tried to reassemble it into something that worked for this particular universe. 
> 
> *  
>  **A brief note on the rating:**
> 
> Most of the chapters will focus on cases and investigations, which means canon-typical violence. Nothing too terribly graphic, but if it seems to be straying in that direction I will up the rating. Be advised that the first chapter here draws heavily from both the X-Files Pilot episode and A Study in Pink, and that suicides/murders disguised as suicides feature as a main plot point.

*

Section Chief Stamford had a broad, friendly face and an office full of cigarette smoke. 

This was mildly disconcerting, as John knew that smoking had been banned in federal buildings since at least the late nineties, and the restrictions had only grown ever more stringent in the last decade. 

The source of the smoke was a slim, sour-faced man in a smart three-piece suit. He had taken up residence against a tall filing cabinet by the wall, studying John with keen eyes. He took a long, slow drag on his cigarette as their eyes met. 

Stamford stood, leaning across his desk to offer his hand. 

John took it, shook briskly. He looked back at the smoking man, who did not offer a hand.

"Special Agent Watson," Stamford said, pulling his attention back. He gestured to the chair nearest the desk. "Thank you for coming in on such short notice." 

The man against the filing cabinet had positioned himself in such a way to be visible in John's periphery, just a hint of furtive movement and stale smoke. 

"Of course," John said, sitting. 

Short notice was putting it mildly—he'd been halfway through an autopsy at Quantico when he'd gotten the call, and a mishap with a hastily gulped cup of coffee had left him scrambling for a quick change of clothes.

He'd arrived on time, only just, with his chest heaving and his neck prickling with sweat. Not exactly the impression he'd wanted to make, but when the Section Chief said jump, you asked how high. 

The man by the cabinets drew in another long lungful of smoke. His cigarette hissed. 

"Hah," John said, shifting in his seat to offer a disarming smile. "Thought there was no smoking in these buildings." 

The man did not smile back, merely regarded John with a strangely intent air. He did not speak. 

"Your records say you've been with us for just under two years," Stamford said, all business. He did not look up at the man by the cabinet, did not take his attention off of John. 

"Erm," John said, shifting in his seat, hoping he hadn't put his foot in it too badly in an attempt to break the ice. "Yes, that's correct." 

"You have impressive credentials," Stamford said, tapping the file in front of him with one thick finger. "Enlisted in the army right out of medical school. Rank of Captain. Wounded in action and honorably discharged three years ago. You've chosen not to practice medicine, may I ask why?" 

John flexed his hand, his mercifully steady hand, and looked down. _Do not,_ he told himself, _screw this up._

"I saw the FBI as an opportunity to distinguish myself," he said after a moment. It sounded good. He thought it might be mostly true, even. 

Stamford nodded, looked back at his paperwork. 

"Agents with your kind of background don't come along all that often," he said finally, shuffling the pages and looking up. "Reports from your supervisors have been almost universally positive. It's fair to say you've caught our attention." 

"Well," John said. "That's—hah. Good. I imagine one only gets called in to the Section Chief's office on short notice for something very good or very bad. So." He cleared his throat. 

Stamford smiled at him, then flicked his eyes over John's shoulder to the man by the cabinet. John very carefully did not turn to follow his gaze.

"There's an assignment," Stamford said, still not looking at John. "We'd like you to take it." 

John straightened up, squared his shoulders. "Oh?" 

He didn't want to appear too eager. But Christ, was he ever. Months upon months spent languishing in the forensics labs at Quantico, donning a white lab coat and staring down at corpses on slabs—he'd been bored, well, _stiff._

"Perform well, and there's no telling what doors may open to you," Stamford said, his gaze landing back on John. He smiled. 

The words were friendly, encouraging. But there was something about them that felt odd, like a rough bit of cloth catching at the edge of his subconscious. 

"What, exactly, is the assignment?" 

A furtive rustle to John's right. The man with the cigarette had come away from the cabinet, crossed over to stand behind Stamford's desk. He fixed John with another of those silent, penetrating stares. His cigarette was burning down to its nub. 

He did not look like any FBI agent John had ever seen. His clothes were far too expensive, clearly custom-tailored. There was a watch chain dangling from his waistcoat—a _watch chain_ , honestly, did people even use those in real life?—and an odd, hawkish intelligence in his expression that he wasn't typically accustomed to seeing in his fellow agents. 

The man was not wearing an ID badge.

 _CIA?_ he wondered. _Military intelligence? Politician?_

Stamford rustled his papers, and John pulled away from the man's oddly arresting stare. 

"Are you familiar with an agent named Sherlock Holmes?" Stamford asked him.

John startled.

"Yes," he said, hesitating. 

Stamford raised his brows, glanced briefly towards the smoking man, who did not react. "How so?" 

"By reputation," John said, and damned if that wasn't the understatement of the year. Sherlock Holmes was a _legend._ "He's—he's rather brilliant, isn't he? Oxford-educated, widely considered the best analyst in the Violent Crimes Unit. Wrote a monograph on serial killers and the occult." He swallowed, weighed whether or not to continue. "He had a nickname, at the academy. Our instructors swapped stories about him, you know? They called him the Freak." 

The name had been whispered like an invocation, more often than not. Spoken with equal parts reverence and disdain. Sherlock Holmes, the Freak, the man they called in when no one else could get the job done. He could see through anyone, through anything.

Or so they said. 

John cleared his throat again, looked back at Stamford. 

Stamford's attention was on the smoking man. He wondered what they were communicating to each other, with that look.

Perhaps he shouldn't have shared the _Freak_ comment. He'd thought the name to be common knowledge around the Bureau, what with the amount of times he'd heard it spoken. But perhaps—

"Yes," Stamford said, startling him out of his thoughts. He looked back at John, folded his hands in front of him on the desk. "Yes, that's—that's correct. But what I'll also share with you is that Agent Holmes has recently developed a—" another glance towards the smoking man. "—a fascination, let's call it. With a project outside of the Bureau mainstream. Are you at all familiar with the so-called X Files?" 

John blinked, caught off guard. He considered for a moment. "Not really. I mean—I've heard it mentioned. Something to do with unexplained phenomena?" 

Stamford shrugged, smiled at him. It was a disarming smile, reassuring. "Something like that. It's the reason you're here. We'd like you to assist Agent Holmes on this project." 

John smiled, shook his head. They wanted him to _what?_

"Sorry," he said. "Sorry, you'd—"

"You'll provide regular field reports on your activities, of course," Stamford continued. "Documentation of cases. And in these reports, we ask that you offer your own observations on the—well, on the validity of the work itself." 

The smoking man smiled at him, a thin, bloodless smile. He leaned over and stubbed his cigarette out in an ash tray at the corner of Stamford's desk. 

The back of John's neck prickled. He met the man's unnerving gaze, held it. "Am I understanding you correctly? What it sounds like you're really asking is for me to debunk this project." 

Stamford smiled again, gave him an oddly knowing look. "Your credentials and background make you uniquely suited for this assignment. We trust you'll draw the proper conclusions." 

"Right," John said. He clenched his fist, released it, nodded. "Right." 

"Agent Holmes has been informed of your assignment. He'll be awaiting your contact." Stamford stood, once more extended his hand across the desk. "We look forward to your reports." 

*

He rode the elevator down to the basement, trying not to fiddle with the cuffs of his suit jacket. 

He didn't know what to think. 

He'd been noticed, had been hand-picked by his superiors for an assignment. That—that was a good thing. That had to be a good thing. That was the kind of thing he and his peers had hoped for, back in his academy days.

He'd told Stamford that he'd seen the FBI as an opportunity to distinguish himself. 

The truth was a bit murkier, of course, but he supposed that for now it suited him well enough.

And he had distinguished himself, hadn't he? In one way or another, if he'd been hand-selected by the Section Chief for an assignment. It was flattering. 

It left him feeling off-kilter. Unsettled. 

He was, essentially, being asked to spy on a fellow agent. It didn't sit right with him.

The elevator doors opened into a long hallway, narrow, poorly lit, lined with dusty filing cabinets. His nose twitched and he paused, breathing deeply, trying not to sneeze. 

Did they really keep offices down here? _Really?_

Maybe they were having him on. Playing a little practical joke. Even if the FBI, on principle, didn't seem the sort of place where practical jokes went over too well. 

There was an office at the end of the hall, a warm sliver of light spilling out under the door. He paused, registered the nameplate that read SHERLOCK HOLMES, and knocked lightly against the wood. 

"Nobody down here but the FBI's most unwanted," replied a dry voice. 

Sherlock Holmes. An hour ago, he'd been little more than a name, just a legend that other agents swapped stories about. Now he was on the other side of the door. 

John pushed open the door, stepped inside. 

The man himself was seated at a little counter, his back to the door, face pressed up against a microscope. A _microscope?_ John was fairly sure those were meant to be confined to the Bureau labs. 

"You must be—" he started, hesitating as he got a good look at the rest of the office. It was cluttered, musty with the smell of old paper (although how much of that was the office itself and how much was owed to the basement setting he wasn't quite sure), and damp. The desk was piled with papers and file folders, stacked in untidy, precarious piles. 

There was a framed family photo, smiling children on a swing set, oddly homey in the midst of all the mess.

The walls were positively plastered with photographs and news clippings, none of them originating from reputable news sources. The headlines screamed out sensational nonsense about UFOs, aliens, abductions, monsters, ghosts—it was like a window into the mind of a lunatic. 

No wonder they kept this guy in the basement. 

"—Agent Holmes," he finished, after an uncomfortable pause. His eyes found and froze on a—a human skull, perched at the edge of the desk, the world's most inappropriate paperweight. "I'm Agent Watson and I've—well. I've been assigned to work with you." 

He tore his gaze away from the skull and found that Holmes was looking at him. His eyes were startlingly light, his face startlingly young. He was pale, sharp-angled, his hair dark and curling and in no way cut to FBI grooming regulations. 

"Nice to be so highly regarded," Holmes said, his voice quite deep, dry, almost amused. There was an alarming keenness to his gaze, and John could not help but feel pinned in place, flayed open. 

Right, he thought, shifting where he stood. Well. No one earned the nickname "Freak" without a reason.

John held out his hand and Holmes took it after a brief pause, giving it a firm shake. He was still studying him with that unnerving, penetrating stare. He did not stand. 

"Clearly you've pissed someone off," Holmes said. 

"Why's that?" 

"I can't fathom any other reason why you'd have been given this assignment." 

"I—" 

Holmes held up his hand, forestalling him. "You're a medical doctor, currently not practicing, although they do have you working forensics at the academy. Must be dreadfully boring for a man of action such as yourself—a former Army Captain, is it? You've jumped at the opportunity for a field assignment without bothering to research the specifics—otherwise you _never_ would have said yes—" this, spoken with a slightly self-deprecating curve to his lips, "—and, going by the tremor in your left hand, I'd say you're having second thoughts already." 

John looked down at his hand, his traitorous, betraying hand, and clenched his fist. He looked back up. 

"Read my file, then, have you?" he asked. His voice remained quite calm. 

"Didn't have to." 

"Agent Holmes—" 

"Sherlock," he said, unfolding out of his chair, smoothing his suit jacket. He was quite tall. "Please." 

"Sherlock," John tried again. 

"Wounded in action, weren't you?" Holmes— _Sherlock_ —asked, brushing past him and going for a stack of file folders on his desk. "You've recovered enough to pass the physical requirements for entry into the Bureau, although clearly you had to get a bit creative in order to bluff your way through the psych screening." 

John bristled. "What, exactly, are you trying to say?"

"I'm not _trying_ to say anything," Sherlock gave him a flat smile. He looked down at the folder in his hand, flipped through the pages. John caught a glimpse of a crime scene photo, a corpse face down on the ground. When he spoke again, his voice was distracted, almost bored. "I merely observed." 

Right. Supernaturally observant. That's what people had said about him. That was his reputation. Observant, nosy, insufferable. Weird. 

And crazy, apparently. 

"Right," John said. "And how could you possibly have observed that?"

Sherlock glanced up from the folder, pinned him once more with that alarming gaze. "Don't want to bore you with the details." 

"Right," John said again. "Because you didn't observe anything, you read my file. As I thought." 

It had the reaction he'd hoped. Sherlock shut the folder with a brisk snap, drew himself up to his full height, took a deep breath. 

"You have the posture of a military man. Very specific, hard to unlearn. Not an unusual background for someone in law enforcement, after all, the Bureau does a fair amount of recruiting out of the armed forces. Your suit—now, your suit is inexpensive, ill-fitting. You keep tugging at the cuffs. Surely a doctor could afford better. So. Not practicing. Now, back to the suit. Your shirt is wrinkled, poorly matched to your tie. You're an army man with meticulous habits—a bit unusual for you, wouldn't you say? So, you dressed in a _hurry._ In a hurry to make an inconveniently timed, unexpected meeting here at the Hoover Building. Eager, wouldn't you say? Eager to make an impression, eager for a new assignment." 

Some of the tension unspooled from John's shoulders as Sherlock spoke. There was a robotic, mechanical cadence to his words, as if the thoughts were simply piling up in his brain and demanding a voice. 

"Clearly your current assignment is boring you to tears, or you'd be a bit more apprehensive about this new task you've been given. Or, at the very least, a bit more curious as to why you, in particular, have been deemed an appropriate choice to wrangle the madman in the basement. What type of assignment would a doctor and a soldier find boring? Forensics. Obvious. All of that tedious detail work—" he tsked, shaking his head. "Your work begins long after the real action is finished and that's _dull._ Getting a bit harder to hide your tics, now that you're well and truly bored, isn't it? Afraid someone's going to find out about that intermittent tremor in your hand, the weakness in your leg that comes and goes when your mind and body aren't sufficiently occupied?" 

John's mouth dropped open. "You—" 

Sherlock held up his hand, stepped closer, swept his eyes up and down over John's frame. "You're standing at parade rest, _almost_ perfect, but you've got more weight on your right foot than your left. Poor form, Agent Watson. Ah—" he looked up, smiled. "—and you've just corrected it. Wonderful." 

John pursed his lips, studiously avoided looking down at his own feet. "You knew I was a Captain. How?" 

Sherlock shrugged. "Licensed physicians enter the army with the rank of Captain. Judging by your age, the amount of time it would have taken you to complete your medical training, and the probable time frame and recovery period surrounding your injury, it seemed the most likely choice." 

"Right," John said, a smile pulling at the edge of his mouth. "And how did you know I was a doctor, then?"

Sherlock smiled, just a tiny quirk of his lips. "Oh, that. I read your file." 

John stared at him for a moment. Then he laughed. 

Sherlock looked startled. He blinked once, twice, glanced down at the folder in his hands.

"You really get all of that, just from looking at someone?" 

Sherlock cleared his throat, looked up, nodded. There was a caution to his movements, a hesitance that had not been there earlier. 

"That's—well. That's amazing," John laughed again, gave an incredulous little shake of his head. "I suppose that's why they consider you the best profiler in the Bureau then, yeah?"

Sherlock stared at him. _Stared._ "You really think so?"

"What, that it was amazing? Yeah, Jesus, that was—I've never seen anything like that."

"That's not what people usually say," Sherlock said, still staring. 

"What do they normally—" John hesitated. He supposed he already knew the answer to that one, didn't he? _Freak._ He cleared his throat awkwardly, looked around. "Anyway. I'm looking forward to working with you." 

"Are you?" Sherlock tilted his head, his gaze sharp, considering. "I was under the impression that you were sent to spy on me." 

The words stung. John looked away, skin prickling with something akin to shame. He sniffed, squared his shoulders. He did not deny the accusation. 

After a moment, he glanced back at Sherlock, who was watching him with an odd sort of hesitance. He seemed almost surprised by John's reaction. 

Sherlock pursed his lips, held out the file folder. John took it. 

"How's your chemistry?"

John blinked. "What?"

Sherlock smirked, nodded his head down at the folder. "Chemistry. That's the substance found in our victim." 

"I—" John looked down at the folder, utterly lost. "Victim?" 

Sherlock made a pained noise, flung himself back into the chair by the microscope. "Yes, victim. We're agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Emphasis on the _investigation._ By which I mean that we investigate crimes. Did you think this was a social visit? I don't really do those." 

"No," John said. "No, it—it just wasn't—this wasn't included in the briefing. I had no idea you were currently in the midst of an investigation." 

"I'm always in the midst of an investigation." 

"Right, all right," John said. He almost felt like laughing. This man was ridiculous, truly. He opened the folder, looked at the medical report. 

"Victim is James Philimore, age twenty-one. His body was found in an empty sports complex about three miles from his home in Bellefleur, Oregon. He'd been missing for less than twenty-four hours." 

"Poisoning," John murmured, skimming the pertinent facts. "He was found holding an empty pill bottle. No note. The medical examiner ruled suicide?" 

"Mm," Sherlock said, disinterested. He flicked his hand impatiently. "The substance."

"Yeah, all right, getting to that," John said. He read the next paragraph, frowned, read it again. "I'm not—I mean, chemistry really isn't my strongest area—"

"Regardless, your thoughts?"

"It's organic." John frowned. "Nothing I'm familiar with." 

"Hm," Sherlock said. "That's what the medical examiner thought, too." 

"And you think differently." 

"I've seen it before." 

John closed the folder, looked expectantly up at Sherlock. 

Sherlock stood up from his chair again, whirled towards his desk in a flurry of motion. He picked up a file, held it in John's direction. "Sturgis, South Dakota. Victim's name was Jeffrey Patterson. His body was found in an empty office building. Ruled a suicide. Same substance, John." He dropped that folder, picked up another one. "Shamrock, Texas. Beth Davenport. Her body was found at a construction site nearly ten miles from her home. She had no reason to be there. None."

"Ruled a suicide?" John guessed.

"Yes," Sherlock's eyes had taken on a rather manic gleam. He was almost vibrating with excitement. "Ruled a suicide, even though no one could identify the substance she'd taken. Even though no one could come up with a plausible explanation for how she'd gotten there. Or why." 

"So—some kind of new synthetic drug? Accidental overdoses?" John asked, nudging Sherlock over to skim through the other two files. He glanced up at Sherlock's face, let out a little huff of laughter. "Serial killer?" 

"Serial killer?" Sherlock shook his head. "No, not working such a wide geographic area. Highly unlikely." 

"All three victims were young. Early twenties. Healthy," John mused. "Ah. Beth Davenport's file indicates that she was undergoing psychiatric treatment for severe depression." 

"So were Jeffrey Patterson and James Philimore." 

John nodded. "All right, then that explains why the medical examiner was quick to rule suicide in each case—" 

Sherlock made an impatient noise. 

"—but you clearly have some other idea of what's going on. So." 

"There's another connection between the victims. Not just the fact that all three were actively undergoing psychiatric treatment." Sherlock was grinning now, his fingers tapping against his thighs. He spun in a circle, much like a delighted child, and snatched his coat off of the back of the door. "They were classmates, John. Three years ago, all of the victims graduated together from Bellefleur High school." 

"They—" John blinked, startled. "That's—my God. How did you even put that together? These cases were ruled suicides and closed—I didn't even know the Bureau kept tabs things like this." 

"They don't," Sherlock said, tucking his scarf around his neck. "But I do." He finished fussing with the scarf and advanced on John, his eyes bright, gleaming with interest. "Agent Watson, do you believe in the existence of extraterrestrials?" 

John laughed. He couldn't help himself. He managed to choke it down before his chuckle turned into all-out hysteria, but it was a near thing. "No," he said, shaking his head. "No, of course not, I—are you serious? No." 

Sherlock seemed to deflate a bit, but tipped his head towards the file folder in John's hands. "Three suicides that weren't suicides." 

"That's a guess," John said.

"I never guess."

"It's a good guess," he placated. "But still just a working hypothesis. And I don't know where aliens come into this at all—aliens, really? Are they known for being particularly suicidal?" 

"It's not uncommon for alien abductees to report losing time—being unable to account for minutes or hours. There have also been documented cases— _well_ documented cases, John, where a reported abductee has been found miles away from home, with no discernible means of transportation to or from the area." His eyes were agleam again, his expression captivating in its enthusiasm. He lowered his voice, standing very close, his breath warm against John's face. "There is something else at work here. Something beyond the easy answer, the one that everyone seems desperate to accept. And if convention offers us no answers, and science offers us no answers, then, might we not look elsewhere?"

"Elsewhere as in—" John raised his eyes up towards the ceiling, then looked back at Sherlock. 

Some of that manic energy seemed to drain from him. "You're mocking me." 

"No, I'm—" John frowned, because he was fairly sure that Sherlock was crazy. He was also fairly sure that he _liked_ Sherlock. He didn't want to start things off on the wrong foot. "These people all died of something. It's plausible that something was missed in the post-mortem. It's plausible that there was a sloppy investigation. But there _are_ answers to be found, real answers, not answers beyond—beyond the realm of science. Sherlock, the answers are there. You just have to know where to look." 

"Ah," Sherlock said, the corner of his lip curving into a small smile. "Fortunate, that. Knowing where to look is sort of my area." 

John let out an amused little breath of air. Sherlock tugged once on his scarf and straightened up, moving back and out of John's personal space. 

"I take it that someone has tracked down the remaining students from the victims' graduating class?" he asked, finally. 

"Yep," Sherlock popped the 'p' in the word as he waved his hand towards his desk.

John hesitated a moment, waiting for Sherlock to elaborate. When it became apparent he had no intention of doing so, he moved to the desk and took the top folder from the precarious pile.

"Not that one," Sherlock said.

John sighed, set the folder down, picked up the one beneath it. 

"Our flight's at eight o'clock tomorrow morning. Hang onto the file, you might feel the urge to do some light reading tonight." 

He went out of the office in a sweep of long coat, then turned back, lingering in the doorframe. "Lock the door on your way out."

"That's it, then?" John asked, somewhat taken aback.

"Problem?" 

"Just—that's how this works? We've just met, and now we're going to fly out to Oregon to solve a murder?"

"Three murders," Sherlock said. And winked. _Winked._ "Eight o'clock," he called, already halfway down the hall. 

*

The flight to Oregon was uneventful.

The plane was not quite full, and Sherlock wound up sprawled on his back across three empty seats, eyes shut, headphones on, hands steepled under his chin as if in prayer or meditation. He did not so much as twitch for the duration of the trip. 

John sat across the aisle, paging through the file, keeping the folder half-shut to shield the more gruesome photos from the passengers around him. His one effort at making conversation with Sherlock had been soundly ignored. 

Sherlock stirred himself from his trance as the plane landed and stood, smoothing his suit jacket. He did not speak as they made their way through the terminal and collected their luggage. 

It was approximately an hour drive from the Portland airport to Bellefleur, and John settled himself into the passenger seat of their rental car. It was a gray, damp day, and the trees rose up ominously through dense fog as they merged onto the highway. 

"Sherlock," he said, finally.

Sherlock's eyes flicked towards him. 

"I did a little reading, last night. On the case."

In fact, he'd stayed up well into the night researching the victims and their classmates, searching for connections.

"Obviously," Sherlock said. 

John blinked, derailed. "Obviously?"

Sherlock sighed. "Dark circles under your eyes. Three cups of coffee already—one at the terminal before we boarded our flight, one ordered from the beverage cart, and another one once we'd landed. You don't strike me as a nervous traveler, and you've certainly been in more dangerous or stressful situations than this assignment, so, it wasn't that keeping you up all night. Fairly obvious that you forwent sleep in favor of researching our case." 

"Right," John said, rubbing at his eyes. "Yes, well, I suppose there's no point in telling you what I've found, then." 

"There's a connection between our victims that goes beyond simply being members of the same graduating class." 

John let out a little unamused laugh. "Well. You could have just _told_ me that, instead of letting me stay up half the night to find out for myself." 

Sherlock took his eyes off the road to give John a long, penetrating look. His expression was difficult to read. "Better to let you discover it for yourself, I think." 

John nodded, looked out the window at the fog and gloom. He had the strange, fleeting impression that he'd passed some sort of test. 

They drove in silence for some time. 

"So," Sherlock said, finally, his deep voice shattering the quiet that had fallen between them. "Five years ago, ten students on a field trip for their astronomy club disappear without a trace. Their school van is found, driven into a ditch, the driver unconscious with a superficial head wound. He has no recollection of the circumstances leading up to the crash, and no idea where his passengers might have disappeared to. There's a massive search effort in the community, yielding no results. Three days later, all ten students reappear with no memory of their ordeal." 

"Sounds like the setup for a lousy TV movie," John said. He shook his head.

Sherlock smiled. "No official explanation was ever provided. As all of the students in question were in good health and showed no sign of physical trauma, the matter was eventually dropped. Many came to consider the entire incident to be a prank." 

John frowned. 

It had troubled him, reading about it. It troubled him even more, now, knowing that three of those students were now dead under mysterious circumstances. 

Ten students. Juniors in high school when they'd disappeared. When… whatever it was that had happened to them happened. They'd come back, presumably continued on with their lives. They'd graduated. They'd gone off to colleges and universities or had gotten jobs.

Ten students. Ten names. Beth Davenport. Jeffrey Patterson. James Philimore. Jennifer Wilson. Lucy Ferrier. Eddie Drebber. Rachel Stangerson. Gary Jenkins. Helen Rance. Alice Charpentier. Ten mysteries.

"Victims of alien abduction are often ridiculed," Sherlock said. 

John looked at him. Sherlock shrugged. 

"It's not surprising that there would be a lot of people eager to label what happened as a 'prank,'" Sherlock added. 

"You think they were abducted by aliens," John said.

Sherlock didn't respond, stared pointedly ahead at the road. 

"You think—you genuinely think that no one could find them because they spent three days riding around on a spaceship." 

Sherlock opened his mouth, shut it, went on driving. 

"None of them ever said anything, _anything_ , about aliens."

Sherlock tapped his long fingers against the steering wheel. "Would you?" he asked finally.

John had no answer for him. 

They continued on without speaking for a few moments more, the car bumping over a bit of uneven road. Sherlock's unhappiness was palpable. His displeased silence had weight.

"Sherlock—" John started, but was cut off by the sudden blare of the car radio, a burst of static and jumbled voices that set his heart slamming against his ribs. 

Sherlock had jumped too, he saw, the car swerving slightly in its lane. John reached forward and stabbed at the power button. "What the hell—" 

The radio would not shut off. 

Instead, the volume increased, static and unintelligible voices rising up in a squealing, squalling cry, making him want to clamp his hands down over his ears. Sherlock pulled over to the side of the road, gravel crunching under the tires. He unbuckled his seatbelt and flung himself out of the car, the engine still running, the radio still shrieking. 

The car rocked gently as he opened the trunk, fumbling around in their luggage in search of something. 

John leaned over and killed the engine, relieved when the radio cut off as well. He got out of the car, slowly, stiffly, breathed in the damp chill air. 

It was calm, eerily quiet, very much unlike the hustle and bustle of the city he'd grown used to. Tall trees stretched upward all around him, their topmost branches cloaked by fog. 

A somber makeshift memorial had been assembled around the base of a large pine at the edge of where the road curved: flowers, ribbons, a drooping teddy bear bleached and battered by the elements. There was a deep gouge in the bark of the tree. 

John looked at it for a moment, frowning, then walked around to where Sherlock was standing. 

Sherlock had emerged from the trunk with a can of spray paint and a triumphant smile. 

"Is that—" John frowned. "Did you bring that on the plane? That's not actually legal, you know." 

"I checked it in my luggage," Sherlock said dismissively, looking up at the sky and then back down at the road. He was muttering something under his breath, taking a few steps away from the car in the direction they had come from. His coat fanned out behind him.

"Yeah, still not legal," John said, following him. "And what are you doing?" 

Sherlock shook up the paint, the can rattling. Then he stooped and sprayed a bright yellow X right in the middle of the road. 

He straightened up with a little flourish, almost skipping back towards the car to stow the paint in his luggage. He shut the trunk, slipped into the driver's seat and restarted the engine, all without a word. 

John stood outside in the fog for a moment, gaping. After a moment, he feared he looked rather like a fish and shut his mouth. 

His nose was cold. His shoulder ached.

He closed his eyes, breathed, got himself back under control. After a moment, he rejoined Sherlock in the car. 

"What was that?" he demanded. 

"Mm," Sherlock said, his attention already on the road as he pulled away from the shoulder. "Oh, you know. Probably nothing." 

*

Sherlock drove them to the county morgue.

John had been expecting to check into the motel first—the flight had taken roughly five hours and then they'd spent a little over an hour more on the road. He was tired, stiff, and wouldn't have minded a short break to collect himself before beginning the investigation in earnest. 

In retrospect, he supposed this shouldn't have surprised him. 

"James Philimore is scheduled for burial tomorrow," Sherlock said. "I've arranged for us to see him. You'll want to examine the body." 

John sighed. "Right." 

Corpses. Morgues. This was what he'd been doing since he'd completed his FBI academy training. They'd hired the doctor, not the soldier. They had more use for his scalpel than his gun. 

He'd thought field work might be different. 

Sherlock was watching him, his gaze sharp, focused. John had the uncomfortable feeling that his every thought was being broadcast and made an effort to school his expression into something more carefully neutral. 

They went inside. The body had been laid out on an exam table, discretely draped in a white sheet. 

John stood in the doorway for a moment, looking at that sad shrouded shape. Twenty-one years old. Older than some of the kids he'd seen torn apart on the battlefield, but still so terribly, terribly young. 

He glanced up. Sherlock was still studying him, hawklike, intent. 

John cleared his throat, snapped on a pair of latex gloves. He drew the sheet back from the body, tried very hard not to let on that he was at all affected by the scrutiny. 

There were no overt signs of violence on the body. No bullet holes, no gaping wounds, no telltale bruising. Just a young man, his skin pallid and sagging in death. His eyes were closed. 

John bent closer, studied the skin. There were small patches of broken flesh on his upper arms and chest. 

"These appear to be self-inflicted," he said, after a long pause. "The skin is raw in places. Like he was scratching at bug bites or hives." 

"Mm," Sherlock said, and there was something in his tone that John didn't like at all, something that said he knew more than he was letting on. 

John glanced at him, sharply, but Sherlock's expression was bland and placid. He looked back down at the body. "I see no evidence of any bites. Or hives, or weals. Of course, given the time frame we're looking at, if there _had_ been some kind of histamine reaction, the urticaria was likely absorbed back into his system." 

"Mm," Sherlock said again. 

John stepped back from the table, gave him a hard look. "What aren't you telling me?" 

Sherlock looked at him, did not say anything. 

John took off his gloves, dropped them into the trash. He turned around, folded his arms across his chest. "We're not going to get very far if you don't trust me," he said. "What aren't you telling me?" 

Sherlock looked down at the ground. He looked slightly guilty, or—like he was attempting to affect an aura of slight guilt. "There may have been information not included in the medical examiner's initial report. I may have—procured said information." 

"And you didn't feel that was pertinent to share with me?"

"I wanted you to draw your own conclusions." 

John breathed out harshly through his nose. "And are you going to share it with me now?" 

Sherlock nodded, took his phone out of his pocket. He swiped at the screen, held it out to John. 

Scowling, John snatched it from his hand, looked down. 

James Philimore's body filled the screen, slumped on the floor of the sporting complex in which he'd been found. There was a dull shine of basketball court flooring beneath his head, catching and reflecting the camera flash. 

It was similar to the crime scene photograph from the file. Similar, but not exact. The angle was slightly different. Less professional. Almost—intimate. Furtive. This was no official crime scene photographer, snapping photos with full clearance. This was someone using a camera phone, documenting with haste, secrecy. 

A cold, uncomfortable pit settled in his stomach. What, exactly, had he gotten himself involved in?

He swiped to the next photo. Whoever had been holding the camera had crouched closer, pulled the shirt aside to snap a close up of Philimore's skin. There were raised red bumps along his arms and upper chest. They were irritated, inflamed. Bumps he'd clearly been scratching at, with some vigor. 

"This photograph wasn't included in the record you showed me," John said. He looked at Sherlock. "The medical examiner's report made no mention of a severe allergic reaction." 

Sherlock reached out, took back his phone, tucked it away in his coat pocket. 

"This changes things, Sherlock. The unknown substance found in his blood—it might not have been poison at all," John said. "Judging by the severity of that reaction, it's likely he went into anaphylactic shock." 

He looked down at the corpse and then back up at Sherlock, shaking his head. 

"This—why wasn't this included in the report? And how did you get this information?" 

"I have my ways," Sherlock said evasively. "But you're asking the right questions, John. Why, indeed, would the medical examiner see fit to cover up signs of an allergic reaction in the victim?" 

"Maybe he knows more than he's letting on," John said, straightening up. 

From the hallway outside their little exam room came the sound of a commotion; rapid, heavy footsteps, raised voices. 

"Maybe," Sherlock agreed, his lips pulling up into a smile. "Let's ask him." 

The door swung open with some force behind it, rebounding off of the wall as a man stalked in. His face was flushed, fists clenched, and John took an instinctive step to put himself between the man and Sherlock. 

Sherlock had drawn himself up to his full height and was watching his advance with a mildly amused expression. 

"What is the _meaning_ of this?" the man sputtered, seeing something in John's face that brought him to a halt.

"Ah, Dr. Wilson. Right on schedule." Sherlock smiled, clapped his hands together. 

"I want to know what you people think you're doing. You—" 

"Investigating," Sherlock said. 

"You—what?" 

"You asked what it was that we're doing. Or, rather, what we think we're doing. The answer to your question is," Sherlock paused, slipped his hand into his jacket, withdrew his badge, flipped it open with an odd sort of flourish. "Investigating. FBI, Agents Holmes and Watson. Any other questions?" 

"Investigating _what_ , exactly? This young man killed himself. He's scheduled to be buried tomorrow. I'll not have you up here—disrupting everything, putting his family through hell—"

"Dad?" 

A young woman hesitated in the doorway. She wore a vivid pink jacket, her face very pale in the harsh fluorescent light. Her eyes had gone wide, fixed on the corpse on the slab. 

"Jesus," John muttered under his breath, moving to draw the sheet up over the body.

"Oh," she said. "James." She shut her eyes. 

"Jennifer," Wilson said. "Go back outside. You shouldn't see this." 

"Did you know the victim?" Sherlock asked her.

Wilson snapped his attention back to Sherlock, his face contorting. "There is no _victim._ There is no crime here, just a very sad story. Leave my daughter alone." 

"Jennifer Wilson," Sherlock said, looking from the medical examiner to the girl. His voice had gone breathy with realization. "You're Jennifer Wilson." 

She startled at her name, blinking back at him with wide eyes. "Yes. Yes, I'm—" 

"Jennifer, outside NOW," Wilson snapped. He turned back towards Sherlock and John. "You leave my daughter alone—" 

"Your daughter was one of the ten students who went missing," Sherlock said. "Same as James Philimore here." 

Halfway through the doorway, Jennifer froze, turned back. There was a wild sort of hope on her face, a haunted, twisting expression. "Do you know something?" She advanced forward, holding out her hands towards Sherlock as if in supplication. "Do you know something that might—?" 

"JENNIFER!" Dr. Wilson slammed his fist down on the exam table. The steel rattled. The sheet trembled but did not fall away from the body. 

Jennifer cringed away, fled into the hallway. She did not look back.

Wilson turned back towards them, his face scarlet with rage. "It's bad enough that you're here, poking your noses into something that you've no business with. But I won't have you upsetting my daughter, and I won't have you upsetting the family of this boy. He's being laid to rest tomorrow. Do I make myself clear?" 

"With all due respect, I don't think we're the ones upsetting your daughter," John said, crossing his arms. He caught motion out of the corner of his eye, Sherlock, glancing sharply at him. He could not quite parse the expression. Approval? Amusement? 

"Those students are dying, Doctor," Sherlock said, his voice quite grave. "One by one by one. If you know something, now would be the time to share. The clock is ticking." 

"What exactly are you implying—?"

"Tell us about the bumps." 

"What?"

"The hives, on the corpse. Why was there no mention of an allergic reaction in your report?" 

Wilson flipped the corner of the sheet back, displayed the cold pale skin of Philimore's shoulders. "No hives, gentlemen. No bumps. Nothing at all but a troubled young man who couldn't cope with his demons." 

"It can be extraordinarily difficult to diagnose anaphylaxis after death," John said. "There have been studies—"

Sherlock cut him off, advancing on Wilson, drawn up to his full height. "It would appear that a rather large sampling of your daughter's classmates are having difficulty coping with those same demons, wouldn't you say? Are you sure you have nothing else you'd like to tell us?" 

"If you're making some kind of accusation, you better hope like hell you have something to back it up." 

Sherlock's hand slid to his pocket, but he did not remove the phone. 

"Daddy." Jennifer was back in the doorway. She looked very young, very frightened. "Please. Can we go home?" 

"Yes," he said, the fight going out of him. His shoulders slumped. "Let's go home."

"Interesting," Sherlock breathed as soon as they were gone.

"Sherlock," John said quietly. He had stepped very close. "You had him dead to rights with that photograph. You have proof that he deliberately withheld information on the cause of death. Why aren't we arresting him? Bringing him in for questioning?"

"Because," Sherlock said, tipping his head ever-so-slightly, his breath ghosting against John's cheek. They were huddled close, too close, conspiratorial under the harsh lights. "I very much want to see what he'll do next."


	2. FBI's Most Unwanted (Part 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter brings us to the conclusion of Sherlock and John's first case. 
> 
> As in the previous chapter, suicides/murders disguised as suicides feature as a main plot point.

*

It was well past dark by the time they left in search of their motel. 

John had not re-autopsied Philimore, but he had drawn blood samples, done a thorough external examination, and, at Sherlock's urging, taken x-rays. 

"What am I looking for?" he'd asked. 

He had, by that point, been well past tired, past hungry, past irritated. The flush of conspiratorial excitement over catching the medical examiner in a lie had faded in light of the grim reality of the work ahead. 

"Anything anomalous," Sherlock had responded.

Sherlock had not shown any signs of flagging. He'd loomed over John's shoulder while he conducted the examination, huffing little enthusiastic breaths through his nose whenever something seemed, in his eyes, _anomalous._

It had been distracting, and irritating, and John had finally snapped at him to stay the hell out of the way. 

Sherlock had rolled his eyes, but he had backed off a little bit. 

John had found nothing. 

_Nothing._

The x-rays were normal. There was evidence of an old fracture to Philimore's collarbone, a souvenir from a ski injury in his teens. 

Other than the evidence that he'd scratched at himself quite vigorously prior to death, the examination turned up exactly what John thought it would—James Philimore had been a healthy adult male. 

No anomalies. 

"None of this makes any sense," John had said to Sherlock as they finally, finally made their way out of the morgue and into the damp night air, "If it really wasn't poison that Philimore ingested, and his death can be chalked up to an allergic reaction rather than suicide—there's still no explanation for where his body was found. Or for why the medical examiner might have covered up his true cause of death." 

"Of course there's an explanation," Sherlock said.

John had paused, his hand on the door handle, looked at him expectantly. 

"Obviously I don't know what it is yet," Sherlock added.

John had smiled tiredly, gotten into the car. 

"Not enough data," Sherlock said, starting the car. His voice was clipped, prim, almost offended. 

John's tired smile spread to a full on grin. He turned his head to hide his expression, looked out the window at headlights ghosting through heavy fog. 

He liked Sherlock. 

It was easy to see why people didn't. The man was prickly, defensive, arrogant, possessing of a kind of manic energy that could run from captivating to infuriating in seconds flat. He seemed to have no regard for personal space or comfort of any kind. 

But there was an electricity to him, a barely constrained electric thrum of danger and adventure and mystery that seemed to crackle in the very air around him. He was fascinating, and not just as an oddity or a freak. 

He was also startlingly attractive, which had not gone unnoticed. 

_Here be monsters,_ John thought grimly. He'd been down this road before, one too many times. The thing with Sarah, back in medical school. The thing with James in Afghanistan. The almost-thing with Murray in the academy. 

He'd never been particularly introspective, but he knew enough to recognize a pattern when it was staring him in the face. 

_Do not screw this up,_ he'd told himself in Stamford's office. He reminded himself of those words again now, sleep-deprived and exhausted, leaning his head against the cool window of their rental car. 

"Dinner?" Sherlock asked, his voice shattering the silence that had fallen between them. 

John jerked in his seat, startled. He rubbed at his face with the heel of his hand. "Ah—"

"I don't believe our accommodations are in the kind of place that offers room service," Sherlock said. "You could take your chances with the vending machine, or we could stop for takeout at the little Chinese place we just passed." 

John's stomach gave a low, rumbling growl. 

Sherlock raised his brows, turned into the restaurant parking lot without saying a word. 

*

The motel was a decrepit roadside affair with patchy carpeting and dated, musty-smelling interiors. John didn't mind. There were four walls and a proper bed. He'd seen worse. 

He drew the flimsy curtains against the darkness, set his luggage aside, went into the bathroom to splash water on his face. The overhead light buzzed like an insect, flickering madly. 

He booted up his laptop and cracked open his carton of lo mein, breathing in the mouthwatering aroma with a satisfied sigh. He ate absently as he typed up his notes, his observations on Philimore's body, his speculation about the medical examiner's involvement. 

He was uncomfortably aware of Sherlock through the thin wall between their rooms, could hear him moving around, rustling and thumping. Unpacking. Running water in the bathroom. Settling in. 

He sighed, shut his laptop, cleared away his mess. 

The bed was uncomfortable, the springs stiff and unyielding under his back. The scratchy blanket chafed against his skin. 

He was exhausted. But he feared that sleep would be a long time coming. 

The case troubled him. 

He was a practical man. He did not put much stock in conspiracy theories or large-scale cover ups. 

If Wilson was, in fact, covering up the true nature of Philimore's death, he had to be doing so for a reason. The obvious answer would be that he was hiding his own involvement, that he himself had had a hand in killing Philimore. 

But that didn't explain the connection between the other victims, Beth Davenport and Jeffrey Patterson, both of whom had perished far from Bellefleur and well outside Wilson's reach. There had been no mention of anaphylaxis in their autopsy reports, either, just the same unidentified substance. 

It was true that their bodies had not been discovered right away. As with Philimore, it was likely that the more overt symptoms of an allergic reaction had faded. Without reason to suspect otherwise, both medical examiners had separately drawn the conclusion that the victims had traveled to a remote location to take their own lives. Those conclusions were backed up by the subsequent investigation and reports from the victims' families that both Davenport and Patterson had been severely depressed. 

Of course, none of the friends or family contacted had been able to provide a compelling reason why either victim had chosen the location they had. Neither location had any emotional significance to the victim. They were not geographically convenient, or even particularly comfortable. 

It was, in a word, weird. Which, he supposed, was what made it an X File. 

He fell into an uneasy, restless sleep. 

*

They went to the cemetery in the morning, stood on damp grass under a slate gray sky and watched a procession of somber mourners lay James Philimore to rest. 

He had attended far too many funerals in his lifetime. It was hard not to skim his eyes over the faces of Philimore's friends and family and see the faces of others in their place. There was something painfully universal about grief, about the way that people touched by it held themselves, set apart, marked. 

Sherlock stood beside him, silent and alert. 

"Wilson's here," he murmured at one point, nudging John. 

John followed his gaze to where the medical examiner stood, arm around his daughter. Jennifer Wilson was wearing a black dress, black tights, her pink coat drawn tightly around her. Her face was puffy, blotchy with tears. 

Standing next to Wilson was a man in a khaki sheriff's uniform. His arms were folded tightly over his chest, his lips pursed together. 

"Must be Sheriff Drebber," Sherlock murmured.

"Like Eddie Drebber," John said. "One of the students who went missing." 

"Mm," Sherlock said. "You _have_ been paying attention." 

"His son isn't with him," John said, glancing around. The crowd at the gravesite skewed young, which was understandable given the age of the victim. 

Sherlock didn't respond, his attention flitting across the sea of people. John wondered what he was seeing, what secrets he read in their posture, their clothes, their faces.

Jennifer Wilson dabbed a tissue under her eyes, took a shuddering breath. She looked over her shoulder, her gaze landing on John. There was something terribly young and vulnerable in her expression. 

Her father tightened his arm around her shoulders and she returned her attention to the ceremony. 

"There," Sherlock said, inclining his head towards two young women huddled together at the edge of the crowd. 

John squinted at them. He had seen their faces before, smiling black and white photos from news articles about the disappearances. 

It had begun to drizzle as the ceremony broke up, and then Sherlock was in motion, long legs carrying him through the sea of slow-moving mourners. John hurried after him, wet grass lashing against his ankles, dampening the cuffs of his suit trousers. 

Sherlock cut in front of the two women, impeding their passage. 

"Alice Charpentier and Helen Rance?" he asked. 

They drew to a halt. 

"I'm Alice," the taller of the two women said. "Do I—do I know you?" 

Sherlock glanced over at John. "FBI," he said quietly, with a discrete flash of his badge. "Can we speak with you for a moment?" 

The women exchanged glances. 

"About James?" The second woman, Helen, asked finally. Her voice was hoarse. She'd clearly been crying. 

"He was a classmate of yours," Sherlock said. "And not the first one to die under mysterious circumstances." 

"Sherlock," John said. He looked at the women. "I'm Agent Watson. This is Agent Holmes." 

"You think he was murdered," Alice said. "You wouldn't be here if you thought it was just a suicide." 

"And what do you think?" Sherlock asked her. 

Alice and Helen looked at each other again. 

"I think it's weird," Alice said finally, cautiously. "First Beth and Jeff, then Rachel and Gary, and now James—"

"Rachel and Gary?" Sherlock cut in. "Rachel Stangerson and Gary Jenkins?" 

"Yeah they're—they're dead too. Didn't you know that?" 

Sherlock looked sharply at John. "Suicides?" 

"No, it was—it was a car accident. Just a few months ago," Helen shook her head. "Just outside of town. Gary and Rachel were killed. Eddie and Lucy were with them. They survived, but…"

Alice reached out, took her hand, squeezed. 

"Sorry," Helen said with a tearful shuddering little laugh. "It's just. Um. Too many funerals. You know?" 

"Look," Alice said. "James had problems. Everyone knew that. He was being treated at the state hospital over in Raymon County. It seemed like every week he had a new diagnosis. Depression, schizophrenia—no one could agree." 

"He was hallucinating," Helen said. "He talked about it, some, last time we saw him. Bright lights. Voices, people telling him to go places, to _do_ things. But he said he felt like he was getting better. He said that he finally had hope." 

"That's why this is so—" Alice shook her head. "He was getting _better._ Who talks about hope and then goes and does something like this?" 

John glanced over at Sherlock, who no longer seemed to be listening. His entire body had gone rigid, his face lit up like a kid on Christmas morning. 

"The voices," Sherlock said. "Has anyone else you know mentioned hearing voices?" 

Alice stepped back as she took in his expression, shooting a nervous glance in John's direction. "Um." 

John edged Sherlock aside, stepping forward, schooling his own expression into sympathy. "Alice, Helen, please. Any information that you can give us would be tremendously helpful." 

"Lucy," Helen said, finally. "Lucy Ferrier. She's over at Raymon County, too. Her and Eddie both. They've been there since the accident." 

"Eddie was in a coma," Alice said, speaking to John. "He woke up, but he's not—um. They call it a waking coma, I think? It's like he's there, but he's—not. We went to visit them, once, but—" 

"Lucy is different," Helen said. "She's not like Eddie. She's awake, and aware, but she's—she's not really herself anymore. But she started talking about voices. Lights. She was scared, you know? The doctors say it's because of the trauma, from the accident, and that she'll get better, that she _is_ getting better, but—" 

Helen's voice trailed off. She was crying again, tears leaking slowly down her face. 

"Come on, John," Sherlock said, turning and striding off. 

"Sher—" John stared at Sherlock's retreating form, startled, and then turned his attention back to the two young women in front of him. "Helen, Alice, thank you. You've been a big help. We'll be in touch if we have any further questions." 

He turned and hurried off after Sherlock, feet slipping on the wet grass. He caught up at the car, managing to climb into the passenger seat as Sherlock started the engine.

"What was that?" he asked, irritated, as Sherlock peeled out of the parking lot, back wheels skidding. 

"What was what?" Sherlock's tone was bored, distracted. 

"That!" John snapped. "You just _ran off._ Those girls were upset." 

"Of course they were upset, it's a funeral." 

John grit his teeth, breathed. He stared straight ahead. "Where are we going?" 

"Raymon County Hospital. Obviously." 

"Oh, obviously," John echoed, shaking his head. 

*

Lucy Ferrier was housed in a wing of the facility dedicated to long-term residents. 

"She self-admitted here following her car accident," John said as they approached her room. "Once she had recovered enough from her injuries to be discharged from the hospital. Her injuries were severe, Sherlock, trauma to the spinal cord. She'll never walk again." He frowned, looked around at their sterile surroundings. "She's lucky to be alive." 

"Self-admitted," Sherlock said quietly. 

"She can leave at any time," John said. "She was initially seeking treatment related to the accident—she was having difficulty coping with the nature of her injuries. But her treatment course has changed—" he hesitated, reading further. "They suspect a form of schizophrenia. She seems to be suffering from periodic hallucinations, hearing voices…" 

"Just like James Philimore," Sherlock said. 

Lucy's room was neatly kept, a cluster of family photographs on a bland white dresser, a soft and faded teddy bear on the small bed. 

Lucy herself was seated in a wheelchair by the window, looking out at the gray morning sky. She did not turn towards the sound of the door opening, did not react to John's gentle knock. 

"Lucy?" John said quietly as they entered her room. "Lucy, we're with the FBI. I'm Agent Watson, this is Agent Holmes. Is it all right if we ask you a few questions?"

Sherlock brushed past him, crouched down next to Lucy's chair. 

She pulled her gaze away from the window, looked at him. Her face twisted into an expression of haunting despair. 

"They want me to look outside now," she said to Sherlock. She turned her attention back to the window. 

"They?" Sherlock asked.

"They want me to look outside," she said again. 

Sherlock turned his head, stared intently out the window with her for a long moment. John stood back and watched them, conscious of his own breaths, the sound of footsteps in the hallway, the steady patter of rain against the windowglass. 

Sherlock sighed, sat back on his heels, returned his attention to Lucy. "Do they want you to look at anything in particular?" 

"Sherlock," John said, warning. 

"Hope is coming," she said. She smiled. It was a weak thing, that smile, thin and tremulous. 

"It's good to have hope," John said gently, crossing the room to stand next to Sherlock. 

Lucy frowned, bit her lip, shook her head. She did not speak. 

"Lucy," Sherlock said, his voice low, intense. He looked her right in the eye. "Some time back, something happened to you. To you and your friends. Do you remember anything about that?" 

"Sherlock," John said, sharper this time. 

Lucy stared at Sherlock for a long moment. Her brow furrowed up. "The accident?" 

"No," Sherlock said. "Before that. You were missing. For three days." 

_"Sherlock."_

Sherlock gave John a withering look, returned his attention to Lucy. "I want to help you, Lucy. I want to help you and I want to help your friends. But you have to tell me what you remember." He glanced back up at John. "Please," he added.

"We went for a walk in the clouds," she said. "It wasn't very fun. But I can't tell you more than that. I have to look outside now." 

Sherlock's face had gone positively incandescent at her words and John grabbed his arm, tugged him to his feet. 

"Sherlock," he hissed, voice low, lips close to Sherlock's ear. "You can't just interrogate her." 

"A walk in the clouds, John," Sherlock said. "What could she possibly mean by that? Hm?" 

"A lot of things," John said. "Or possibly nothing." 

"No hope," Lucy said, her voice small. "No hope here." 

"No," John said, turning away from Sherlock, crouching down in front of Lucy. His heart ached for her. "No, Lucy, it's—"

"We went for a walk in the clouds," Lucy said, staring at him earnestly. Her hands fisted in the knit blanket across her lap. "And we forgot all about it. We _lost hope._ And then I was in a car accident. At Christmas. With my friends. I'm very lucky to be alive, do you know that? That's what they keep telling me. I'm very lucky to be alive. But now—" she frowned, shook her head, looked back at the window. "Hope is coming. I have to keep watch."

"All right, Lucy," John said quietly..

Lucy looked back over her shoulder, seemingly torn between them and the window. "I don't mind you being here. But they want you to go now." She resumed staring serenely out the window, did not react as they left the room. 

John herded Sherlock through the door and out into the hallway. 

"What," he said, breathing hard through his nose, "the hell. Was that?" 

"I was questioning a witness." 

"No," John said, shaking his head, pressing his lips together. "Nope. No. That girl in there—"

"She's twenty-one, hardly a girl." 

"That girl in there is—" John clenched his fist, forced himself not to shout. "She is _in there_ because she's undergoing active treatment, Sherlock, that's _why she's here._ You have no idea if she's suffering from kind of post-traumatic stress because of what's happened to her—"

"Likely," Sherlock said. 

"For GOD'S SAKE," John bit off on his shout, turned away from Sherlock, took another deep breath. He spun back, hands clenched at his sides. 

Sherlock flinched, looked at him, really looked at him, his expression startled. 

"You could have set her treatment back, did you think about that? Pushing her like that?" 

"I am trying to _help_ her," Sherlock hissed. "Unlike her current course of treatment—does she look like she checked herself in or out of _anywhere_ of her own volition?" 

It was uncomfortably true. It was also a distraction from the real source of John's ire.

"Trying to help her?" John asked, harsh, angry. "Or to help yourself?" 

A troubled furrow appeared between Sherlock's brows. He regarded John for a moment before turning away, striding towards the exit, coat flapping behind him. He did not once turn to see if John had followed. 

*

Sherlock's phone rang as he merged back onto the highway. He fished it out of his jacket pocket, tucked it against his ear, never once taking his eyes off the road. 

"Holmes." 

John slouched in the passenger seat, watched the scenery go by. The endless gray sky and fog and trees were beginning to make him dizzy. 

Sherlock had not so much as glanced at him, not once, since they'd gotten back into the car. 

He regretted losing his temper.

Sherlock's line of questioning had been…inappropriate to the situation. But not malicious. Regardless of his outlandish theory for what had happened to Lucy Ferrier and her friends, he did want to help her. 

Sherlock finished the call, dropped his phone back into his jacket pocket. 

Silence. 

"Was that the lab, then?" he asked finally.

Sherlock blinked, cut his eyes sideways towards him. When he spoke, his voice was tentative. "Yes." 

"They find anything?" 

He took a deep breath, seemed to weigh his options. Then he pursed his lips, nodded once. "There were anomalies. In Philimore's DNA structure." 

John frowned. "What kind of anomalies?" 

"I had an entire battery of tests run on Philimore's blood. The reports are showing abnormal protein chains in his blood, John. It could be the result of what they're calling branched DNA. It's a—a biological marker of sorts. It's not normal, John." He looked away from the road to meet John's eyes for a moment, his own wide and bright with curiosity. "Whatever this mystery substance is, whether it's poison or something else, it's interacting with the victim's DNA. It's very specific. Targeted, almost." 

"Targeted," John repeated. 

"Whatever this substance is, it affected Philimore on a genetic level. Interacting with this anomaly in the DNA, triggering a severe allergic reaction. But I suspect that if you or I or just about anyone else on the planet were to encounter this substance—"

"—It wouldn't have the same effect," John finished. 

"Exactly. It would be like taking a placebo. We'd experience no ill effects whatsoever. Only someone with this—precise abnormality in their genetic structure would react." 

"You think they're all like that," John said, sitting up straight. "All of those kids who went missing. You think that whatever happened to them—" 

"It left its mark," Sherlock said. "And not just on their psyches." 

"All right," John said, nodding. "We'll need blood samples. From all of them. If they're willing."

Sherlock glanced over at him, surprised.

"Speculation is all well and good, but we need proof," John said. "This is all going in my report, Sherlock. If we can prove that they've all got the same genetic mutation, we can safely say that they are likely being targeted because of that mutation. No one is going to stand in your way when you try to reopen these cases as murders and not suicides." 

Sherlock looked a bit stunned. He blinked, nodded. "Right. Yes, of course." 

He pulled into the motel parking lot, stopped the car.

"Oh," he said. 

John followed his gaze to where Jennifer Wilson stood under the motel sign, her pink coat vivid against the dreary gray backdrop. She had her arms folded protectively over her chest. Her hair was rain-damp, plastered flat against her head. She looked like she had been standing there for some time. 

"Please," she said, when Sherlock got out of the car. "You have to help me." 

*

The diner was mostly empty, save for a boisterous work crew on their lunch break in the back, and an elderly couple picking at sandwiches in a booth near the entrance. 

Jennifer had tucked herself into the corner of a booth, one leg pulled up, knee crooked under her chin. Her sneaker squeaked against the aged vinyl. She had not taken off her coat, her skin sallow and pale against the bright pink. 

She had her phone on the table in front of her as she picked listlessly at a plate of fries. The phone buzzed, periodically, with an incoming text, the screen lighting up. She did not so much as glance at it. 

From across the table, John took a sip of his coffee, waited patiently. Sherlock, next to him in the cramped booth, positively thrummed with constrained energy. He had opened his mouth to speak, earlier, but had closed it again at John's warning look. 

After another long moment, Jennifer dropped a fry from between her fingers. She looked up. 

"I think you know something," she said. "About my friends. About me. About what's happening to us." 

Sherlock opened his mouth again, then cut his eyes towards John, hesitating. John gave him a slight nod. 

"I think it would be helpful if you began by telling us what you know," Sherlock said. 

Jennifer nodded, looked down at her hands. "They're dying. My friends. They're all dying, and I'm going to be next." 

"Why do you think you'll be next, Jennifer?" 

"Because that's what happens when you start to remember." 

"When you start to remember," John said. "You're talking about what happened to you and your classmates. When you went missing. Are your memories coming back to you?"

She bit her lip. 

"You remember now, don't you, Jennifer?" Sherlock pressed gently. His eyes were alight with interest. 

She nodded slowly, shut her eyes. "It sounds crazy. I know it sounds crazy. But Beth ran all the way to Texas to get away from this, and then she started to remember, and she killed herself. And Jeffrey was in South Dakota on a work assignment, and he—he called me. He told me that he knew what had happened to us, and that it was _awful_." Her voice broke, and she clenched her hands on her lap, her head hanging low. "He killed himself that same night. I heard about it in the morning, when I woke up. I could have helped him. I spoke to him. I should have helped him, but I just—I didn't know what to say. I couldn't remember the things that he could. I didn't know what he was talking about." 

"But you know now." 

"Yes."

"What happened to you, Jennifer?" 

"They took us." 

"They?"

"Aliens," she said, and then she started laughing, tear-choked, unamused. "Little. Green. Men. I told you it sounded crazy. No one would believe that. I wouldn't believe that if someone said it to me. But what else could it have been? There were ten of us in that van. We were supposed to be camping out, watching the stars. For our astronomy club." 

John tugged a handful of napkins out of the dispenser, passed them across the table. Jennifer closed cold fingers around them, pressed them to her face, sniffled. 

"I was sitting with Rachel in the van. She's—she _was_ my best friend. Gary was right behind us. He was complaining that our chaperone had made a wrong turn—he was new in town, you know? He'd just started at the school. They gave him the astronomy club because we were. Um. Not that difficult, you know? Bunch of nerds." She laughed again, a wet sound. "We were on the road, in the woods, and then everything went white." 

"They found the van in a ditch," John said, keeping his voice gentle, soothing. "The driver, your chaperone, he said he'd lost control, crashed. He wasn't familiar with the roads, took a curve too sharply." 

"Maybe he did," she shrugged. "Or maybe he crashed because of the way everything went white. It wasn't natural. It was _cold._ And when I woke up, we weren't in the van anymore." 

"Where were you?" Sherlock leaned across the table, unblinking, focused. 

"The white place?"

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know." She shook her head. "It was. Um. Like a hospital. But not—not like any hospital I'd ever been to. I could hear my friends. I could hear them screaming." 

John felt the weight of Sherlock's gaze. He turned to look at him, frowning. 

"They gave me something," she said. "It made me sick. It felt like something crawling in my blood." She shuddered, looked up at the ceiling. Her eyes were red-rimmed, haunted. "They put us back together, all of us, in a room. Their eyes—and _my_ eyes—" she reached up, pressed against her eyes with the heels of her hands. "Our eyes had gone black." 

"You couldn't see?" 

"No," she said. "I could see. But my eyes weren't my own. There was something with me. Something with me in my head. I could hear it thinking. I could _feel_ it thinking." 

"Some people who claim abduction experiences have reported that extraterrestrials have the ability to communicate telepathically," Sherlock murmured. 

"No," she said. "No, it wasn't—they weren't talking to me through my head. They were _in_ my head. It was like it was. Um. Living in me. Like it was a part of me. And then they came and they took me back and strapped me down. There were men. They strapped me down and they injected me with something and it _burned._ I knew I was going to die. I was screaming and I could hear my friends screaming and—I could feel it gushing out of me, out of my eyes, my nose, my mouth. I was choking on it. It was in my ears. And then it was gone and my body was my own again." 

She was breathing hard, her chest rising and falling. She looked like she was going to be sick. 

Sherlock had leaned back in the booth, frowning. His brow was furrowed up. 

"Whatever they gave me," she said. "It dragged that _thing_ out of me." 

"Through your face." 

She shrugged listlessly. "I woke up in the woods. I was cold. Hungry. And then the search party found us. None of us could remember. No matter what we tried. But there were dreams. Sometimes. Bad ones." 

"Did you all have the dreams?" 

She nodded. "Yeah. Um. None of us did too well, after. You know? They said it was probably, um, post-traumatic stress. Or something. Trying to cope. We've all been in out and of therapy. I think that's why no one is surprised that—well." She let out another bitter little laugh. "My dad's been a nightmare lately, since this all started. He thinks he can protect me, through sheer force of will. But I don't think he can." 

"You said that Beth and Jeffrey killed themselves after they started to remember," Sherlock said. "What about James Philimore? Was he remembering too?" 

"Yes," Jennifer said. "His parents took him for treatment right away. They were calling it schizophrenia. But it wasn't—he wasn't—those were hallucinations. He was remembering. And now he's dead too." 

"And Lucy Ferrier?" 

Jennifer glanced up. "You went to see Lucy? Is she all right?" 

John glanced helplessly at Sherlock, sighed, looked back at Jennifer. "She's in good hands." 

"My dad won't let me visit her," Jennifer said. "I was supposed to be in the car with them that night." She looked down at her hands again, frowned, bit her lip. "It was just after Christmas. Maybe a month or so after Jeff died. Eddie had called me, said he wasn't doing so well, that he thought some of his memories were coming back. He was afraid. He wanted us to get together, as a group. Maybe to talk about it." 

"You didn't go." 

"I couldn't," she said. "I felt so—you have to realize. What happened with Jeff. It felt like it was my fault. I'd spoken to him, and I hadn't—I couldn't _do_ anything. When Eddie started talking like that, I panicked. I hung up on him." She made a bitter little sound. "Rachel went. And Gary, and Lucy. And he hit that tree, and—well. Then there were two more funerals, and Eddie and Lucy hurt. Lucy will never walk again. That's what they say, anyway. But she might be able to come home soon, when she's herself again. If that ever happens. I have my doubts." 

"What doubts?" John asked.

"I don't think she'll ever be herself again." 

"If there was a traumatic brain injury—" 

"Not like that," Jennifer said. "No. She'll never be herself again because I don't think she's alone in her head anymore. I'm not." 

John glanced over at Sherlock. 

"What do you mean, you're not alone in your head?" Sherlock asked. 

"Whatever they did," Jennifer said. "Whatever thing they put in me and tried to rip out—they didn't get it all. And my memories, they—they woke it up. It's _awake._ And it's _talking_ to me." 

A chill ran up John's spine, in spite of the warm diner and the hot coffee in his hands. 

"Jennifer," a flat voice behind them. 

Jennifer looked up, her features softening in dismay. "Daddy." 

Wilson, the medical examiner, was standing in the aisle. His coat was rain damp. "I've been looking everywhere for you. You haven't answered my texts." 

"I'm all right," she said. "See?" 

"Come on home," he said. "You shouldn't be out on a day like this." 

"I don't think she wants to leave," Sherlock said. 

"I don't care what you think," Wilson said, his lip curling. "I never gave you permission to speak to my daughter."

"She's an adult," John said, standing up, nearly chest-to-chest with the other man. "She doesn't need your permission." 

"You're here to investigate James Philimore's suicide," Wilson said. "My daughter has nothing to do with it. And we're leaving." 

"I don't want to die," Jennifer said. She looked helplessly back at them. 

"Then don't commit suicide," her father snapped, tugging once on her arm. 

Jennifer whirled back towards, him gave him a flat, angry look. He softened.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Just—just come on home now. You're safe at home. I'm trying to help you." 

She went without additional protest, trailing behind her father. 

"Jesus," John said, watching the door swing shut behind them. He looked at the mess of half-eaten fries that she had left on her plate, the bloodlike smear of red ketchup. His stomach gave an unpleasant lurch. 

"He thinks he can keep her safe," Sherlock said, watching through the window as Jennifer and her father got into a car, drove away. "He thinks he can protect her if he keeps her close. But he's wrong." 

"Sherlock, if the return of memories somehow signifies the next victim—" 

"Then we don't have much time," Sherlock said, reaching for his coat. 

"Sherlock," John said. "She's hearing voices in her head. She should be in treatment—" 

"Doesn't seem to be helping any of her friends," Sherlock said. "Therapy isn't going to help these kids, not if the voices they're hearing in their heads are real." 

"You can't mean that." 

"You have a better theory?" 

John opened his mouth, shut it. Jennifer's story had unsettled him, had left him feeling off-kilter and uneasy. There was something deeply haunted in her, something rooted in her experiences in the woods all those years ago. 

"The blood samples," John said, finally, heading for the door. "Jennifer Wilson's father is going to make it very difficult for us, even if she volunteers. But we should be able to reach Alice Charpentier and Helen Rance. I'll call Raymon County, see if we can arrange for a sample from Lucy and Eddie—" 

Sirens shrieked along the roadway, an ambulance, lights flashing in the dim gloom. A police cruiser followed close behind. 

Sherlock paused in the parking lot, watching the commotion. 

A moment later, another police car went screaming by. 

Sherlock looked at John. 

They ran for the car. 

*

Sherlock slowed as they came around a bend in the highway and approached the flashing lights of emergency response vehicles. He pulled off the highway, the tires spraying up gravel and loose stones. 

"Sherlock," John said, looking down at the ground. He was standing atop the yellow X that Sherlock had spray painted on their way into town. He lifted his head, eyes alighting on the sad little memorial he'd noticed that day, the ribbons, the teddy bear, the gouged pine tree. 

The memorial, John realized, likely marking the spot where Eddie Drebber had lost control of his car.

Sherlock looked down at the ground, then up, his attention fixed on the commotion just over the embankment. 

"You marked this place," John said. "It meant something to you. The radio interference. You've seen it before." 

"Interference with electronics is one of the signs. Potentially." 

"Signs. Signs of what?" John laughed, shook his head. "Of aliens?"

Sherlock tipped his head, shrugged. There was a small, self-deprecating smile toying at the edges of his mouth. 

"Right," John muttered. "Right." He turned, started walking towards the gathered police. 

He flashed his badge as they advanced on the scene, eyes taking in the ambulance—lights gone dark—and the EMTs, who were not moving with any particular haste. 

He glanced over at Sherlock, whose expression was grim. He'd clearly made the same deductions. 

There were officers clustered in the tall weeds at the roadside, looking down. One of them looked up as Sherlock and John approached, broke away to intercept them. It was the man they'd seen at the cemetery that morning, in his uniform khakis, face lined and weary with exhaustion. 

"Sheriff Drebber," Sherlock said, flashing his badge. "Agents Holmes and Watson, FBI." 

Drebber frowned at them. "What can I do for you?"

"What's going on here?" John asked, craning his neck to see around Drebber. 

"Nothing the FBI needs to be concerned with." 

Sherlock made an impatient noise and simply stepped around Drebber, waded into the tall grass. John followed, drawing up short as they came upon a corpse, half slumped against the base of a large pine tree. 

"Oh God," John said. 

It was Lucy Ferrier. She was pale and still in death, dressed inappropriately for the weather. She was barefoot. Her face had gone slack, peaceful. She had a glass vial clutched in one limp hand. 

"John," Sherlock said, pulling gently at the collar of her thin shirt. 

The skin at her chest and throat was red, irritated, covered in raised welts. 

"You're disturbing evidence," Drebber said, coming up behind them. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave." 

"Who called this in?" Sherlock demanded. 

"Passing motorist saw her, thought she might be in some distress, stopped to assist. Discovered that this young woman has apparently committed suicide, called us in." 

"Suicide?!" Sherlock's voice was outraged. "On what do you base that idiotic assumption—"

"A thorough investigation will be carried out, of course," Drebber said, stepping closer to Sherlock, speaking through clenched teeth. "But the presence of the pill bottle and the suicide note found on the victim's body makes it pretty cut and dry in my opinion." 

"Note," Sherlock said, barking out a harsh laugh. "Right." 

"Said she didn't want to go on living in this state," Drebber said. He had a folded bit of paper in an evidence baggie.

"Yes, and speaking of her _state,_ " Sherlock spat. "How did she get here? This woman is a resident at Raymon State." 

"She had a day pass," the sheriff said. 

Sherlock's brows shot up.

John glanced over at him, shook his head. "A day pass. Oh, well, sure. Yeah. That explains everything. And where's her wheelchair?" 

"What?" 

"Lucy Ferrier was paralyzed below the waist," Sherlock said. "A fact you're no doubt aware of, as she was a close friend of your son. She didn't walk all the way out here." 

"This has nothing to do with my son—"

"The wheelchair," Sherlock growled, looking around. "Where is it?"

"There's no wheelchair." 

"Then what do you suppose happened to it? Did she eat it?" 

"Have you noted the raised irritation on her skin?" John cut in before Sherlock could really go off, bending back down. "I want this documented. Officially. And photographed." 

"Of course, anything for the FBI," Drebber said, voice dripping with mock congeniality. "Certainly the poison ivy she chose to sit in was a key contributing factor to her suicide. Thank heavens you boys were here to point it out to me." 

John shot another incredulous look in Sherlock's direction. Sherlock looked utterly flabbergasted, an expression John suspected he did not wear very often.

"Now listen. I think I've humored the both of you enough," Drebber said. "This has nothing to do with the FBI, or any kind of FBI business. You're both in the way, and you're trespassing. I'm going to have to ask you, again, to leave." 

John glanced over his shoulder, saw the EMTs making their slow way towards them, toting a stretcher and body bag. He looked back at Sherlock, an idea brewing. 

Sherlock caught his gaze, furrowed his brow, cocked his head as he attempted to parse out what had captured John's attention. 

"I'm going to make a phone call," John said, loudly, standing up, fumbling in his coat pocket. He gave Sherlock a meaningful look. "This is ridiculous. You can't block us from the scene." 

He turned and walked away, climbing up the rolling embankment towards the street. Behind him, he could hear Sherlock's voice rising, starting up a fresh argument with Drebber, providing an effective distraction. 

With a quick glance around to make sure that no one was looking, John hopped up into the back of the ambulance, rummaged around in one of the supply cabinets, came up with what he needed. 

He went back down the embankment again, speaking into his phone. "Yes, sir, yes. Thank you. We'll be in touch." He fixed Drebber with a stony stare. "You'll be hearing from someone in Washington." 

"Oh, I'm just quaking in my boots," Drebber said. "Now get out of the way." 

"Shit," John said, dropping his phone into the snarled vines next to the corpse. He bent down, and Sherlock, wonderful genius that he was, swept in front of him, his coat blocking John briefly from view as he hurled insinuations about the sorry state of Drebber's personal life based on creases in his shirt and dried shaving cream behind his ear. 

He reminded himself that it was wildly inappropriate to be grinning at a crime scene. 

Using the purloined supplies, John drew off a small blood sample from Lucy's arm. The sight of her, small and cooling in the damp air, sobered him. 

He swept his hand through the leaves and vines, fingers finding his phone. He stood, pocketing the vial he'd drawn, followed Sherlock back towards their rental car. 

"Nicely done," Sherlock said. 

A giggle bubbled out of him before he could stop himself. "I can't believe we just got away with that." 

"Of course," Sherlock said, "we _could_ have just followed proper protocol and requested blood and tissue samples once the body reached the morgue." 

"Yeah," John said, looking up at the sky, scratching at the back of his neck. "And we will. But who knows how much red tape they're going to throw up in an effort to block us from doing so. These people are hiding something, and I don't want to give them enough time to get away with it. While we're waiting for official clearance, we can have the labs test this sample to see if your branched DNA lead is worth pursuing at all." 

Sherlock shot him an unreadable look. He started the car. "John," he said.

John looked up, surprised by the solemn tone. 

"I looked at Lucy Ferrier's feet. While you were running your little errand back at the ambulance."

"Her feet?" 

"There were scratches. Cuts. Gravel embedded in her skin." Sherlock paused, breathed. "She walked there, John."

"That's impossible," John said.

"I know." 

They stared at each other for a long moment. Sherlock's eyes were wide, near colorless in the fading light of day.

*

The sky was darkening by the time that they made it back to the motel. Lightning danced in the distance, followed by warning rumbles of approaching thunder. The drizzle had tapered off, the clouds above heavy, unyielding.

John slammed the car door, his skin crawling, electric with the oncoming storm. A damp wind lashed at his face, whipped at his hair. The odd giddiness from the crime scene had departed, leaving him anxious, unnerved. 

"John," Sherlock said, right behind him. 

"What the—" John turned around, clenching his fists, breathing hard. "What the hell is going on here, Sherlock?" 

He'd seen death. A lot of it. He'd seen terrible things, some he'd never forget, things that had taken up permanent residence in his dreams. 

But he'd never seen anything like this. The—the loss of innocent young life, and the systematic cover up of all relevant facts. The willful blindness of the local police force. 

"What do you think is going on?" Sherlock asked, standing too close, his eyes bright. He was bouncing on the balls of his feet like a small child, overly excited. Lightning flashed, illuminating the sharp planes and angles of his face. 

John tore his gaze away, because that way lay madness. 

"You think it's aliens." 

"Of course it's aliens," Sherlock said, huffling a little laugh, nudging John with his shoulder. The air was heavy with rain that had yet to fall, the wind buffeting their coats. 

"Sherlock—" John shook his head.

"Offer me another explanation," Sherlock said. They had stopped walking, were standing a few paces away from their respective doors. 

John shook his head, gave a helpless shrug. "Medical experimentation? Someone using those kids as test subjects?" 

"Then we agree," Sherlock said, grinning. His teeth were very white. "Except you say someone, and I say some _thing_." 

"I want to bring in Wilson," John said, stubbornly pushing on. "He clearly knows more than he's letting on, if he's not the one behind all of this." 

"All right," Sherlock said. Lightning flashed behind him again. "I'll call over, put the wheels in motion for a warrant. I want to search his office." 

John nodded. That was reasonable. That was rational. That was the proper course of action. They could have a warrant in hand by tomorrow morning. 

Lightning, again. The wind kicked up, lifting Sherlock's hair away from his face. 

"We," John said, and swallowed. "We should probably go inside. Before." 

He did not finish his sentence. 

Sherlock stared at him for a beat longer, too close, really, they were much too close. Then he turned, moved briskly for his door. 

"First thing tomorrow," he said.

"Yeah," John said, nodding, nodding, seemingly unable to stop nodding. "Yeah." 

Sherlock disappeared through his door, shutting it behind him before John had even dug out his own key. 

*

The motel room, unobjectionable the night before, seemed suddenly too small. 

John looked at his laptop. He should type up his field notes now, while they were fresh in his mind. While he was still flush with anger, with horror over what had been done to Lucy Ferrier, what was still being done, what secrets the town seemed desperate to cover up. 

He thought of Sherlock, giddy with his own wild theories. 

It almost seemed possible, for a moment. In this isolated, foggy little town with its deeply held secrets. 

For all he knew, Sherlock had planned it this way. Be so charmingly crazy that the crazy started to seem insignificant. 

This was dangerous.

A startling crack of thunder rattled the windows, and the power flared and went out with a weak, fizzing pop. 

"Great," John said, abandoning the idea of working on his notes. He'd not charged his laptop. 

Another rumble of thunder, and then the rain began, a gentle drum that built up to a steady drone against the roof. 

The thunder made him nervous, edgy. It made him think of explosions, of gunfire, of sweat and blood. 

His shoulder ached. He rubbed at it ineffectually for a moment through the thin material of his shirt. 

A flare of lightning lit up the room through the flimsy curtains, made him cringe. He swallowed, turned away, navigated through the cramped little room to the tiny bathroom, turned on the shower taps. 

The pipes groaned, then yielded a pleasingly strong stream of hot water. 

He scratched at an itch on the back of his neck, shut the door. Steam and the steady sound of rushing water filled the room, drowning out the storm. 

He shrugged out of his t-shirt, unbuttoned his jeans, started to slide them down. His fingers brushed against irritated, pebbled skin where his waistband met his belly. 

He froze. 

Took a deep breath.

He swept his hand along his belly again, encountering raised bumps that flared to hot, itchy life as he touched them. His neck prickled and he scratched at it again, conscious of the motion this time, his heart pounding at the feel of yet another raised, itchy bump under his fingers. 

His hands had started to itch. 

He squinted at the mirror, straining to catch his reflection. It was too dark to make anything out past his own faint outline. 

"Jesus," he said, panic rising in his throat, choking him. He turned off the water, drew in a shuddering breath. Another crash of thunder sent him bolting for the door, spilling back out into the bedroom. He slammed into the edge of the dresser, pain blooming in his hip. 

He'd been very close to Lucy Ferrier's body.

 _Medical experimentation,_ he'd hypothesized, mere hours earlier. 

_Aliens,_ Sherlock, crazy, wonderful Sherlock, had said. 

Another sizzling bolt of lightning, whiting out the room for a moment. He thought of Jennifer Wilson, with her big, haunted eyes, saying _everything went white._

He tore out the door and into the howling storm without thinking. Rain lashed against his face, stinging his skin. It was cold, bracing. He realized he'd forgotten his shirt, left it crumpled on his bathroom floor. 

Thunder boomed again. He flinched. There was water in his eyes. 

He hadn't felt the bullet when it had pierced his shoulder. One moment he'd been squinting into the sun, and he'd turned to say something to the man standing next to him. The next he'd been lying flat on his back, gasping, eyes rolling up into his head as he tried to focus and his mouth full of blood. He'd bitten clean through his lower lip. He'd been hot and cold and horrifyingly out of control. The fingers on his right hand had been scrabbling in the dirt, bits of stone and shards of glass digging in under his fingernails. He hadn't been able to feel his left hand at all. 

_Please God,_ he'd thought, staring up at that clear, clear sky, breaths coming in labored gasps, consciousness fading. _Let me live._

He was gasping now, left hand pressed against the itchy welt on the back of his neck. He stumbled the few paces towards Sherlock's door, determinedly self-assessing. 

His airways were clear. Any immediate trouble breathing was purely psychological, a panic response. Whatever was happening to him, it hadn't progressed to that level yet. Sherlock would know what to do.

And if he didn't, at least he'd be a witness.

He pounded on Sherlock's door, laying his forehead against the damp wood. 

Sherlock yanked the door open, brows raising in surprise. 

"Sherlock," John said, and pushed his way into the room.

"Um," Sherlock said. He shut the door, stood awkwardly against it, stared. 

"Look," John said. 

Thunder rumbled again outside, the windowpanes rattling. It was dark in Sherlock's room, warm. 

"Um," Sherlock said again. A flash of lightning, nearly blinding through the windows. Sherlock's face, briefly illuminated, all frozen up and wide-eyed. 

"Please," John said, suddenly terrified that he might die, right here, might succumb to whatever it was that had killed Lucy Ferrier and James Philimore, and he might do so with Sherlock staring at him like a deer in headlights without the faintest idea of what was going on. He bent his head down, ran his own hand over the back of his neck, scratched at his forearms. 

Sherlock remained frozen for another long moment before springing into action, all sudden quick grace. He fumbled for his phone, lit up the screen, held it over John's neck. His breath ghosted over John's skin, his fingertips, just barely grazing around the edge of the irritation. 

He was silent as he dropped into a crouch, studying the welts that had sprung out on his arms, his sides. 

"Is it the same thing?" John asked, when he was no longer able to bear it. "Sherlock." 

Sherlock breathed in, grazed another of the bumps with the tip of an index finger. 

John had come over in gooseflesh. He shivered. 

"No," Sherlock said, and he breathed out, sat back on his heels. His phone went dark. "No. It looks like poison ivy. Lucy Ferrier was sitting in a big patch of it, didn't you notice?" 

John sagged, relief making him weak, and a slightly hysterical giggle bubbled out of his mouth. He'd been rummaging around in those leaves and vines, making a show of looking for his dropped phone. 

Sherlock glanced up, his eyes flicking over John's scarred and mangled shoulder, then to his face.

"I—" John said, heat creeping into his face. He was uncomfortably aware that he'd just barged, half-naked, into his new partner's motel room. In the dark. In the middle of the night. He looked down, then away, started to scratch at his neck. Stopped. "Shit. Yeah. Some doctor I am, huh? Sorry." 

"You panicked," Sherlock said, getting to his feet. He sounded curious, not particularly upset. "Given the nature of the crimes we're investigating, it's not an entirely unexpected reaction." 

"Right," John said. He could not quite bring himself to look Sherlock in the eye.

He turned away, another roll of thunder rumbling overhead. He was acutely aware of how exposed he was, cold, damp. Shivering. _Pathetic._

"Wait," Sherlock said, and then hesitated. "Let me. Um. I'll get you a towel." 

He disappeared into the bathroom, returned with a large, soft blue towel. 

Of course, John thought. Of course he'd be the type to bring his own towels. No way he'd put that skin at the mercy of cheap motel linens. Probably brought along his own bedding, too. 

He frowned, because, _really_ , what kind of thought was that to have? 

He accepted the towel, rubbed it briskly over his head and hair, then patted his arms and neck gently, trying not to re-irritate the skin. He left the towel draped over his shoulders, catching drips of moisture from the ends of his hair. 

"Thanks," he said. He looked at the door. "Of course, I'm only going to get soaked again. I'll—"

"Just wait it out," Sherlock said. 

"What?"

"The storm. Just—you can wait it out. Here. It's fine." 

"Oh," John said. "Right. All right."

He looked around, blinking in the darkness.

"I have—there are candles. Hold on." 

There was a clatter from somewhere to John's left, a rummaging, rustling noise. 

"They don't normally have candles in motel rooms," John said. "Too afraid someone might burn the place down." 

"This isn't a normal sort of town," Sherlock said, his voice moving closer in the dark. The snick of a lighter, a spark in the darkness, and a warm flame bloomed. 

"You smoke?" 

"No," Sherlock pocketed the lighter, his eyes gleaming in the firelight. "Quit. Good for brainwork, but hard to sustain a smoking habit these days." 

_Not as hard as you'd think,_ John thought, thinking of the strange man in Stamford's office. 

"Good for breathing," he said. 

"Breathing's boring." 

He huffed out a little laugh. "Right. Bit necessary, though." 

"Mm," the sound was dismissive.

John looked around the room, helped by the gentle flicker of the candle. Sherlock's suitcases had been not so much unpacked as _exploded,_ odd detritus draped over every surface, casting looming, flickering shadows on the walls. 

There was not a clear place to sit. The little desk chair was covered in a pile of papers. 

Hesitantly, tentatively, he took a seat at the edge of the bed. 

Sherlock did not seem to mind. He remained standing by the window, looking out at the storm. Another bright flare of lightning cast him in a brief, striking silhouette. 

"The storm makes you nervous," he said. 

John breathed out hard, the sound louder and angrier in the close quiet than he'd intended. 

Sherlock turned back towards him, gave him a long level look. His expression was difficult to parse in the dim light. He turned back towards the window.

"You think I'm crazy," he said after a long moment. 

"Well," John said, and laughed, a hesitant, nervous chuckle. 

Sherlock turned back to face him. This time, there was a smile twitching on his lips. 

John relaxed, leaned back against the headboard. His nerves were frayed. He was suddenly quite tired. 

"I assume they provided you with a bit of my… history. When they gave you this assignment." 

"I'd heard of you before," John said. 

"Yes," Sherlock said. "Most have." 

He sat down on the floor next to the bed, the back of his head resting against the mattress. The rain beat against the windows, the roof. 

"Modest," John said. 

"Should I be?" Sherlock's head tilted, just enough for his eyes to catch John's. 

John shrugged, noncommittal. "Might make things easier for you." 

The room was warm. He felt sleepy, comfortable. Even the thunder seemed distant, faraway, unimportant. 

Sherlock did not respond. He looked away, gazing off into a darkened corner of the room, his expression distant. 

"What's your story, anyway?" John asked, finally, when the silence had stretched on for too long. 

Sherlock turned his head back, frowned. "What?" 

"Well. We're—we're going to be working together. I don't know much about you. Other than a few Bureau legends." 

"What do you want to know?" Sherlock's response came quickly, spoken with a hint of confusion. 

John shrugged. "I don't know. Anything. What do you do for fun?"

Sherlock sighed, looked away. "Boring." 

He laughed. He couldn't help it. 

Sherlock looked back at him, brow furrowed. He seemed to recognize that there was no malice in John's laughter, but still wore an air of faint confusion. 

"Workaholic, then, all right," John said, shaking his head, amused. "Got a girlfriend?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes. _Rolled his eyes._ "No. Not really my area." 

"Oh," John said, and then it hit him what Sherlock might be trying to say. He straightened slightly, looked down. "Right. Boyfriend, then?" 

Sherlock rolled his eyes again. "No." 

"All right." John hesitated. "Unattached. Like me." 

Sherlock sat up from where he'd been sagged against the side of the bed, turning around to pin John with a stare that seemed alarmingly more alert than it had been a moment ago. He was frowning. "Um," he said. 

Christ, John had gone and made him uncomfortable. He hadn't meant to. He hadn't even meant—he just had wanted to get to know the man a little better. 

"Look," John said, holding up a placating hand. "I—" 

"John, you should know," Sherlock looked away, staring at the window. His shoulders were rigid. "I consider myself married to my work. I'm flattered by your interest, but—" 

"No," John said, letting his hand drop, knowing that touching Sherlock on the shoulder would be the wrong thing to do. "No, nope, not—I'm not trying to—that's not at all what I meant. I just—I'm just trying to get to know you better. Because I'd like to know you better." 

"Because we're working together." 

"Because you're interesting." John winced. "That's—that's not. Not at all what I'm trying to say." 

"John—"

"You're a Bureau legend," he said, sitting up, folding his arms. "I don't think you quite understand—people talk about you like you're some kind of myth. But I get the impression that none of them have ever been in a room with you, or if they have it's only while you're in the middle of working on some problem, and it's not—" He shook his head, giving up. Words were failing him. 

Sherlock turned back, and there was curiosity in his gaze. He didn't speak, and after a long pause, settled back down on the floor, his head resting once more against the mattress. 

John's warm, dozy comfort had evaporated. He should go. He'd botched things up enough. 

But Sherlock didn't look uncomfortable. Sherlock didn't look like he wanted John to leave. And by the look on his face just moments before, John wondered when the last time was that someone probed at Sherlock the man, Sherlock the human being, and not just Sherlock the legend. 

The rain went on. 

It was comforting, soporific. John's desire to flee faded. 

"My brother," Sherlock said, finally, after a long silence. His deep voice was startling in the heavy quiet of the room. "You know the story?" 

John lifted his head, not a little alarmed to realize that he had been dozing against Sherlock's pillows. "No, I—I don't." 

"Ah." Sherlock looked back up at him from his seat on the floor, his head lolling against the mattress. He seemed to weigh his options, then nodded, just slightly, making up his mind. "I was twelve when it happened. My brother Sherrinford was eight. He just—disappeared. One night. Just gone. Vanished. No note. No phone calls. No evidence. Nothing." 

John sat up a little straighter. "You never found him?" 

Sherlock shook his head. He shut his eyes. "It—tore the family apart. There were no facts. Nothing to see. Nothing to find." 

John pursed his lips, wanting to lean forward and offer comfort, knowing it would not be well received. Sherlock's story was a sad one, a terrible one, and not entirely uncommon. He was hardly the first person to have chosen a career in law enforcement after a youthful brush with tragedy. 

He made a sympathetic noise in lieu of reaching out. "What did you do?" 

Sherlock shrugged. "What does anyone do? I ran away from it. I went to school in England. When I came back, I was recruited by the Bureau. Seems I had something of a natural aptitude for behavioral profiling. Except what I do isn't, precisely, what they teach in the Behavioral Science Unit." 

"You read people," John said. "The way you read me." 

"I'm very observant. I observe everything—down to the smallest detail. And I've studied human behavior. Extensively. From my observations, I make deductions." 

"Pretty accurate ones, if your reputation is anything to go by." 

"Very accurate," Sherlock said.

"So what you did with me—when I first showed up at your office. You can do that with crime scenes, too, can't you? That's how you're so good at putting together the pieces." 

Sherlock tipped his head in silent assent. "For a while, it seemed like that would be enough. My success brought with it a certain reputation, and with that a freedom to pursue my own interests. And then I came across the X Files." 

"Bit of a jump from serial killers to little green men, isn't it?" 

Sherlock's lip curled in faint amusement. "Many think so, yes." 

"You don't." 

"At first, it looked like a dumping ground for cases the Bureau had no intention of pursuing. UFO sightings. Alien abductions. Tabloid nonsense. The kind of thing most people laugh at." 

"You weren't laughing." 

"I was _fascinated,_ " Sherlock said, turning his full attention back to John. He could see it, the wildfire of interest behind Sherlock's eyes. "I read everything I could get my hands on. And then I—I began to realize why, exactly, it had captured my attention in such a way." 

John frowned, shifted closer, pulled in by the light in Sherlock's eyes, the earnest expression on his face. 

"I chose to explore regression hypnosis." 

"Sherlock, you know the studies—" 

"I've been able to access parts of my memories. Of the night my brother disappeared. I can recall a bright light, a presence in the room. I was paralyzed, unable to do anything. He was screaming my name, John, and I couldn't move." 

John scrubbed at his face with one hand, discomfited. "You were a kid, Sherlock." 

"There is more out there than what's been documented and understood," Sherlock said, insistent. His eyes were very bright, intent. "The government knows about it. Lately, it seems that I've attracted the wrong kind of attention. It means I'm getting close. It's only through cultivating relationships with certain highly-placed government contacts that I've even been allowed to continue my work." 

"You're saying that the government, our government, knows about this? And is trying to cover it up?" 

"You know this," Sherlock said, and there was an edge to his voice. He looked away. "You're part of that agenda. My very own spy. Here to shut me down." 

"Sherlock, I'm not a part of any agenda," John said, his voice firm, steady. "I want to find out what's happening here. I want to solve this case, I want to bring the perpetrators to justice. These kids deserve that much. And I don't—" he swallowed. "I don't much care if the answers we find aren't the ones the Section Chief expected when he sent me. Or the ones he wants to hear." 

Sherlock studied his face, seemed to read the truth in his words. He gave a short, sharp nod. "I have to know, John. I have to _know._ Nothing else matters to me." 

John held his gaze for a long moment. Sherlock breathed out, seemed to relax again. 

"How did she run, Sherlock?" John said, finally. "Lucy Ferrier. She couldn't walk. How did she run away? How did she get there?" 

"I don't think she was the one in control."

"You think it's like what Jennifer Wilson said? That there's something… living inside her head?" 

Sherlock didn't respond. His face was pensive, troubled. 

John thought again of Lucy Ferrier, of her wide, sad eyes. That little tremulous smile. Her attention, rapt on the window. She had not died comfortably. She had died alone. She had died _afraid._

She had not died by her own hand, he was certain of it. Regardless of what the medical examiner put in his report. 

"Ah, Christ," he said, because it had been bad enough, seeing kids that age die in combat. At least they'd signed up. They'd known what they were in for. Lucy Ferrier, she'd been an innocent. She'd been trying to heal. She'd been hopeful.

"What?" Sherlock asked him, his voice low, close in the dark. 

"Just—that poor girl, Sherlock. She was talking to us, just this morning. She was talking to us about hope. And now—" 

Sherlock breathed in, sharply, the sound shocked, almost exultant.

"Say that again," he demanded. He leapt to his feet with a grace and speed that was surprising, given how long he'd been folded on the floor. He leaned over, pinning John with his stare.

"Lucy Ferrier—" John started.

"No! Repeat exactly what you just said. Exactly." 

"She was talking to us about hope?" 

Sherlock clapped his hands together, his eyes going wide. He spun around, nearly knocking over the candle in his haste. John lurched to his feet and grabbed it before it could set a pile of papers ablaze. 

"Careful!"

"Hope," Sherlock said, flinging a folder aside and diving for the next one. Then he gave up and dug his phone out of his pocket, the screen casting his face an eerie blue in the dark. " _Hope._ "

"What are you—"

" _Yes_ ," Sherlock breathed, freezing as he stared down at the screen. "Oh. _Oh._ " 

He blurred into motion, whirling away from John, grabbing for his coat. 

"Sherlock, what—" 

"HOPE, John!" Sherlock bellowed. "Come on. We have to hurry!" 

"You keep saying that, but—" 

"The van driver," Sherlock said, his voice fast, words practically tripping over one another. "The new teacher, the one who organized the trip. He never went missing, so no one paid him any mind. He was never under any suspicion. His name was _Hope,_ John. Jefferson Hope." 

"Oh my God," John said, realization flooding in. _Hope is coming,_ Lucy Ferrier had said. She'd said it, and she hadn't looked peaceful, or hopeful at all. 

"We need to talk to the medical examiner. Wilson." Sherlock said. "Now." 

"All right," John said, pulse jumping. He draped Sherlock's borrowed towel over the back of the nearest chair. "I'll be right back."

"Hurry up." Sherlock was winding a scarf around his neck. He leaned over, blew out the candle.

John opened the door, went out into the storm. 

*

The Wilsons' neighborhood still had power, street lights illuminating rain-wet asphalt. 

Every light in the house was on. The front door yawned open, screen swinging in the breeze. 

"That's not good," John said, dread sinking into the pit of his stomach. 

Sherlock didn't say anything, just slid out of the car and moved quickly up the walk towards the house. 

A shadow briefly blocked the light streaming from the front entrance, and Dr. Wilson emerged through the doorway, his hair wild, his face flushed. He advanced on Sherlock and John moved quickly to catch up, to step between, certain that Wilson was about to escalate. 

Wilson caught Sherlock by the lapels of his coat, his knees giving out. "Have you found her? Tell me you've found her." 

"Dr. Wilson," Sherlock said, standing steady in spite of the man clinging to him. "What's happened? Where is Jennifer?"

"She's gone," Wilson said. His voice was scraped raw, as if he'd been crying. "She's gone. She's gone and she's next and WE HAVE TO FIND HER!" 

"All right," John said, reaching out, easing Wilson away from Sherlock. "All right. Where would she go? Was she with anyone?" 

"They said I could keep her safe," Wilson said, babbling now, turning his sweaty stricken face towards John. "I was trying to keep her safe. But they lied. They _lied._ "

"Yes," Sherlock said, his voice dry, disinterested. "That's what they tend to do. Now. The facts, please, we don't have much time." 

"She's going to kill herself," Wilson said. "Just like the others. I won't be able to stop her. I thought I could, you know. They told me I could. And I thought if I kept her close, that I could stop her—" 

"Dr. Wilson, please," John said, giving the man a little shake. "What happened?"

"She was—she heard the news about—about Lucy. I tried to shelter her, but she had her phone, someone must have—they must have told her—" He took a deep, shuddering breath, seemed to refocus. "She became very agitated. She said she was going to be next. She seemed very certain of it. She kept—she kept talking about Rachel."

"Rachel Stangerson?" John asked. 

"Jennifer's best friend. She died. She died in the same car crash that Lucy—well. Jennifer always felt guilty. For not being there. It ate her up inside, I know it did, and now they're going to use that guilt somehow, they _are_ using it, and they're going to make my daughter kill herself. Just like the others." 

John glanced over at Sherlock, who seemed deep in thought. 

"Please," Wilson said. "I thought I could keep her safe. That's all I ever wanted." 

"Exactly what did your daughter say about Rachel?" Sherlock asked. "Be specific." 

"What?" 

"Rachel!" Sherlock snapped his fingers. "There's no time to waste." 

Christ, John thought, they had almost no chance. All of the victims had been found in places they had no reason to be. There would be no reasoning out where Jennifer had gone off to. If she'd even gone of her own volition. 

"She said—um—" Wilson was trembling, but appeared determined to concentrate. "She said she was going to die. Like Rachel. She said not to forget about Rachel, that it was important. She kept saying her name." 

Sherlock spun away from Wilson, his hand over his mouth. He walked up the steps and into the house without speaking.

"What—" Wilson said. 

"Come on," John said, grimly, following. 

Sherlock made a beeline up the stairs, his hand trailing absently across the patterned wallpaper. He hesitated at the top, looking both directions before sweeping to the left, pushing his way into a brightly lit bedroom. 

The room was messy, the bed unmade. He ignored the pile of unwashed laundry, pushed his way over to the little desk in the corner. There was a slim laptop resting on the table, bubblegum pink. Over the desk was a bulletin board, pinned with photographs. 

John stepped up beside him as his eyes slid over the photos, noting the faces, familiar faces, young and carefree and not yet touched by tragedy and horror. 

Sherlock opened the laptop. 

"Password protected," John said. 

Sherlock rolled his eyes. 

"What are you doing?" Wilson asked, lingering in the doorway. "You need to be out looking for her—" 

Sherlock whirled away from the desk, slammed the door in Wilson's face. He returned his full attention to the laptop, the corner of his lip lifting in a smile. 

"Sherlock," John said. 

"Jennifer Wilson doesn't want to die," Sherlock said. 

John shut his eyes. "No, Sherlock, she doesn't. That's why we need to find her." 

"Her father seems to believe that she's been talking about her friend Rachel out of some type of survivor's guilt." 

"It's not that much of a stretch." 

Sherlock rolled his eyes again. "Jennifer Wilson is clever, John. Clever enough to know her life is in danger and clever enough to want to do something about it. If you knew you were about to die, if you had just a few moments to pass on a message, what would you say?" 

John thought of the bright sun, the clear sky, the taste of blood in the back of his throat. The distant, rolling thunder rumble of gunfire. "Please, God, let me live?"

Sherlock made a disgusted sound. "Oh, use your imagination!"

"I don't have to," John said, his voice clipped. 

Sherlock blinked over at him, his attention momentarily diverted. Something complicated happened in his expression, and he hesitated before continuing. "If you were convinced that you were being watched, that your every word was being monitored by something living in your _head_ , wouldn't you try to keep things subtle? You wouldn't want to let on." 

John blinked, mulled that over, blinked again. "Wait, what?" 

" _Rachel_ isn't about guilt," Sherlock said. He typed something into the password field, hit the enter key with a proud little flourish. "It's about survival." 

John grinned, unable to help himself. He clapped Sherlock on the shoulder. "Her password. Genius." 

Sherlock was typing again, that small smile playing on his lips. "She's equipped her phone with GPS tracking. She knew she was going to be taken—or summoned—and she was trying to give her father the tools he'd need to find her. Unfortunately, her father's an idiot. Fortunately, we're here instead." 

He lifted the laptop, handed it to John. "Come on. She's not far." 

*

"Turn left," John said, looking up from the laptop. "Here—right here." 

They were in the parking lot of a small industrial park, the buildings dimly lit and largely vacant in the nighttime gloom. 

"Which one?" Sherlock asked, leaning over to frown at the map. 

John shrugged helplessly. The cursor had stopped moving almost ten minutes ago. 

"There—" Sherlock stopped the car, pointed. A yellow taxi idled, driverless, in front of two similarly nondescript buildings. Its headlights cast eerie shadows against the brick.

"The taxi," John said. "That could explain why no one has reported seeing anything out of the ordinary. No one ever notices taxis." 

"Surprised more drivers don't branch out," Sherlock muttered. He looked from one building to the other. Both were devoid of workers, although low interior lights burned in both. Probably for the cleaning crew. 

"Which one?" John asked. 

Sherlock shook his head, frustrated. "The map isn't specific enough." 

"Okay," John said, and drew his gun. "I'll take the left. You take the right." 

Sherlock nodded, drew his own weapon.

John jogged for the door, half expecting it to be locked. It opened easily under his hand. To his right, Sherlock disappeared into the second building without a glance in his direction. 

His heart thudded in his chest, his vision clear, his hands perfectly steady. He breathed in and out, even, measured breaths. He kept his steps light on the ground, easing his way down the hallway. 

The building had a claustrophobic feel, gray carpets and rows of nondescript cubicles. His skin prickled. 

There was not a sound out of place, save for his own hushed breaths and the gentle hum of computers on standby. 

He tightened his grip on his weapon, turned right at the end of the hallway. 

*

The glass door swung shut behind Sherlock and he breathed in, a deep breath, filling his lungs with the scent of the place. Musty carpet, old paper, the faint dust-and-ozone smell of computers. 

He stepped quietly into the room, his senses on high alert. 

Banana, faint, oversweet, verging on unpleasant. An office worker had discarded the peel into a waste bin under their desk. A chemical floral scent—cheap hand lotion. A pleasing whiff of peppermint—bowl of candies at the reception desk. 

Another inhale caught the sharp tang of sweat in the air, the malodorous, acrid sweat secreted by the apocrine gland in the midst of a stress response, as opposed to the mild scent of eccrine sweat, typically prompted by exertion. 

It was, quite literally, the smell of fear. 

He squared his shoulders, removed the safety from his gun, and strode down the darkened hallway. 

There were voices coming from one of the offices, muffled, unhappy. He did not hesitate, simply pushed open the door and stepped inside. 

"FBI," he said. 

Jennifer Wilson, pale and tearful but very much alive, was sitting at one end of a long wooden conference table. There was a vial in front of her, small, glass, just like the ones that had been found with the other victims. Inside the vial was a little red capsule, about the size of a vitamin.

Seated across from Jennifer was a man of unassuming stature, shabbily dressed, gray hair. He was pointing a gun in her face, and had not so much as twitched upon Sherlock's entry into the room. 

"Jefferson Hope, I presume?" Sherlock said. 

Hope flicked his eyes in his direction, raised his brows. "Oh, interesting. I didn't think anyone was ever going to put that together." 

"I'm not just anyone," Sherlock said. "Drop the gun." 

"Jennifer has to take her medicine." 

"Agent Holmes—" Jennifer started.

"Take your medicine, Jennifer," Hope said, his voice calm. He didn't lower the gun. 

"I don't want to die," she said. She looked up at Sherlock. In the dim lighting, she looked very young, and very frightened. 

"We're trying to help you," Hope said. "Got to get that thing out of your head, yeah?" 

"You're going to kill me." 

"We're trying to help you," Hope said again.

"My friends are dead." 

"A mistake," he shrugged. "It happens. There's no precedent for this, you know. It's all been a terrible mistake. And they're sorry. But it's still living in you. You know it, you can _feel_ it, can't you? You have to kill it. Take your medicine." 

There was an intensity to Hope's speech, a fervor that Sherlock very much wanted to investigate further. He knew more than he was saying. 

"Jennifer," Sherlock said, his voice very steady. "Stand up." 

"Stay where you are, or I'll shoot you." 

"He's not going to shoot you," Sherlock said. "He needs you to take the pill." 

"Don't listen to him." 

"Listen to me," Sherlock said. "Whatever he's trying to accomplish—he fails if you don't take that pill. He isn't going to shoot you. Now stand up, and leave the room." 

She stared at him, met his gaze without blinking. Then she stood up. She moved slowly, deliberately, as though waking from a dream. Her hands were shaking.

"Don't move," Hope said, but there was resignation in his tone. His bluff had been called. 

Jennifer must have heard it too. Her composure snapped a few steps away from the door and she broke into a run, fleeing the room, her hair streaming behind her. 

Hope had turned, was now pointing his gun at Sherlock. "You were right, of course. Can't shoot her. Orders. But I don't mind shooting you." 

"I'd like an explanation, first, if you don't mind." 

"Do you have any idea how difficult it's going to be get her back? I'm not feeling particularly conversational at the moment." 

Sherlock eased into the chair that Jennifer had vacated, his gun not wavering from Hope. 

"Calling my bluff, I see," Hope said. "Well, I guess we are at a bit of a stalemate, here. Might as well kill time until your backup gets here." He raised his brows, cut a sly look in Sherlock's direction. "Or mine." 

"You clearly know more about what happened to those ten students than you let on at the time," Sherlock said. "Didn't do a bad job hiding that, all things considered. You were never considered a suspect in the disappearances, and none of the missing students made any claims against you upon their return. Of course, their memories were somewhat… well. Unreliable." He shrugged, smiled humorlessly at Hope. 

Hope smiled back, still holding his gun steady. 

"You're not out to kill them," Sherlock said, studying him, taking in the threadbare clothes, the unafraid demeanor. "You _are_ killing them, of course, but that's not why you're doing this. What I'm not clear on, right now, is what you're actually trying to accomplish." 

"I ought to just shoot you," Hope said. "I'm operating on a tight schedule here. That thing in her head? It's getting stronger. It's starting to _think._ I almost didn't catch up to the last one, you know? It told her I was coming. Ran for its life. And I do mean _ran._ Surprised the hell out of me, if I'm being truthful." 

Sherlock thought on that for a moment. Lucy Ferrier, on foot, running along the road. The yellow X he'd painted on the asphalt on the way into Bellefleur. Static, disturbance on the car radio, John's incredulous face. It was possible, he decided, that she, or it, wasn't just fleeing at random. That it was propelling her towards relative safety. Towards a rendezvous of sorts. 

A rendezvous she didn't quite make, of course. 

The thought made his skin prickle. He was alight with curiosity, with the need to know. But he had no intention of sharing his suppositions with Hope. 

"Branched DNA," Sherlock said, instead.

Hope tilted his head, raised his brows. "Oh, you are good." 

"What's in the pill?" Sherlock asked, tipping his head slightly in the direction of the vial. 

"You want to know so badly? Try it." 

Sherlock didn't respond, simply went on looking steadily at Hope. 

"I'm not some criminal mastermind," Hope said, finally. "I just do my job. We all just… do our jobs." 

"And what is your job?" 

"I was the transport. For those kids. Get 'em out into the woods, crash the van to make it look like a horrible accident. They took it from there." 

"They?" 

Hope smiled, didn't answer. 

"They?" Sherlock tried again, lifting his eyes meaningfully, looking towards the ceiling.

That startled a laugh out of Hope. His hand holding the gun wavered. "Oh, oh, you really don't know anything, do you? Trust me, Mr. Holmes, if _they_ knew anything about this, we'd be in some trouble." 

"I don't understand." It rankled, even admitting it. He hated not understanding. There was something in Hope's smirk that was unsettling him, getting under his skin. 

"We needed test subjects," Hope said. "They fit the bill. Their group was chosen at random. I was placed to ensure smooth delivery." 

"Test subjects for what?" 

Hope yawned, rolled his shoulders. "That's above my pay grade." 

Sherlock stood, his knuckles whitening around the grip of his gun. 

"Alien DNA," Hope said, bored. "They were exposed to alien DNA. That's what you want to hear, isn't it? That we experimented on those kids and now we're destroying the evidence?" 

"No," Sherlock said, shaking his head slowly. "Nice try, but I don't believe you." 

"No?" 

"No. If it were just a matter of destroying evidence, why bother with the pills? There are other ways. Ways that won't attract nearly as much attention. There are already far too many people in this town who have a stake in this little secret of yours—how long have you been bribing the medical examiner? And the sheriff?" 

Hope smiled. "It's not _my_ secret. I told you, I just do my job. And I needed them to look the other way, so I may have implied that their children would remain unharmed if they did what I asked." 

Sherlock nodded slowly, studying him. "That's why you started in Texas. And South Dakota. No one would question a single suicide. Easy enough for you to get Beth Davenport and Jeffrey Patterson out of the way. But when you have an entire group of targets living in the same town—things get a little more complicated. At some point, people are going to start asking questions. So you needed to enlist local help." 

"Do you suppose you have it all figured out, then, or are there actual questions you'd like to ask me before my good humor runs out and I shoot you?" 

"Why the pills?" 

"They're developing a vaccine. A few years back, there was a breakthrough. Something that looked promising. So we tested it."

"Oh human subjects," Sherlock said, frowning. "On _unwilling_ human subjects." 

"Needs must, Mr. Holmes," Hope said. "More recently, we became aware that the—well, that the vaccine had not been as successful as initially believed."

Sherlock stared at him with a certain level of fascination. "What are you saying?" 

"The—let's call it a virus, that those kids were exposed to was never cured, as we thought. It was weakened, yeah. But it became _part_ of them. It took on a life of its own. This substance—" he nodded down to the pill. "—it targets and kills the alien cells. We're not trying to kill those kids, we're trying to kill _it._ You were right, of course. Their deaths are just a side effect. They've merged too completely with the invader for a clean extraction. It's in their very DNA." 

Sherlock nodded slowly. He flashed Hope a brief, flat smile. "Well. This has been enlightening. You'll be explaining all of this in court, I think. Time for you to drop your gun." 

"I don't think so," Hope said. "They'll see me dead before they let me see the inside of a jail cell. These people take their secrets very seriously." 

"You're not entirely comfortable with that pistol," Sherlock said.

Hope twitched, his face flickering with brief confusion. 

"You've adjusted your grip several times in the few moments we've been standing here. You're not used to the heft of it. You're not a particularly fit man, your arms are weak, musculature minimal. That pistol is a large caliber semiautomatic, the recoil alone is likely to throw you off balance. It's not your weapon of choice, and yet you've chosen it for this assignment. Perhaps because it looks more intimidating than a smaller revolver? Regardless, the odds of you actually firing a kill shot, even at this distance, before I am able to discharge my own weapon or move to disarm you are slim to none." 

Hope raised his brows, smiled again. "At this range, are you really willing to take the chance?" He rolled his shoulder, adjusted his grip on the gun. "All right, let's do this the easy way. You take that pill, and I'll drop my weapon." 

Sherlock's mind sparked, confused, intrigued. "Take the pill? Why? If what you've told me is true, the substance in that pill won't harm me." 

"No reason not to take it, then." 

"Other than the fact that I'd be swallowing evidence." 

"Take the pill or I'll start shooting," Hope said. "And we'll find out who's right." 

Still holding his gun steady with his right hand, Sherlock reached out with his left to pick up the glass vial. He held it up to the light, examined the capsule within. 

He glanced back up at Hope, unscrewed the lid on the vial with one hand, tipped the contents out onto the table. 

"Go on then," Hope said. 

He picked up the little pill, turned it over in his fingers, studied it. There was a tiny imprint along the seam, text too small to read without a magnifying glass. The first letter looked like an M. 

He looked back up at Hope, who was watching him intently. The man was right, of course. Sherlock's deductions about his discomfort with the weapon would matter little at such close range. There was a chance he could disarm him, and an equal chance that he'd wind up dead for his efforts. 

Hope had no intention of surrendering. He had that grim light in his eye, the stance of someone who was prepared to die. This implied that the recriminations for failure would be worse than death. 

Hope wanted him to take the pill. It was his last play, his only play. _Why?_ If he was telling the truth, the substance targeted an alien organism that had taken up residence in the host. It killed the organism, which in turn caused the host to die. 

It shouldn't harm him. 

What was Hope's play, here? Was he just looking to have Sherlock remove the evidence, literally swallowing it, so that there was nothing to directly link him to the murders? 

Perhaps there were other components to the pill. Perhaps it included a mild sedative, something to buy Hope enough time to escape. 

Sherlock sighed. He probably should have alerted John when he'd realized he was in the right building. Well. Too late to do anything about it now.

"Time's up, Mr. Holmes," Hope said, and when he lifted his gun it was with clear intent to fire. 

Sherlock tipped the pill towards his mouth. 

*

The building was empty. 

John ensured the last room was clear before hurrying back out the door and down the path to the second building, the one he'd seen Sherlock disappear into. 

A shadow loomed at the door, backlit behind the glass, and he tensed, reaching once more for his weapon before realizing who it was. 

"Agent Watson!" Jennifer Wilson sobbed, pushing through the door and running straight into his arms. "He's in there—he's in there." 

"Are you all right?" He got a hold of her shoulders, gently pushed her back. She did not look injured, just upset. 

"He was going to kill me," she said. "He has a gun. He was going to make me take the pill." 

"Okay, you're all right, Jennifer, you're all right. You still have your phone?" John asked. He waited for her nod of assent. "Call the police. Give them this address. Go wait by our car, right over there. Can you do that?" 

She nodded again, sniffing, already fumbling in her jacket pocket for her phone. "They're in the conference room. At the end of the first hall." 

He bolted through the doors, heart pounding as he tore down the hallway. He could hear voices through the door, Sherlock's and another male voice. There was an almost teasing tone to it that he didn't like. 

He came around the corner to see Sherlock, seated at the end of a conference table, gun in one hand, pill in the other. Across from him was another man, presumably Hope, also holding a gun.

Sherlock was so intently focused on Hope that he did not even glance towards the door. 

"Time's up, Mr. Holmes," Hope said. His finger tightened on the trigger. 

Sherlock lifted the pill to his mouth. 

John saw it unfold in slow motion, with a perfect clarity and focus that he had not felt since he'd been in Afghanistan.

"FBI," he shouted, stepping fully into the room. "Drop your weapon—" 

Hope's finger twitched on the trigger. 

John fired. 

"Are you all right?" he asked Sherlock, glancing at him as he moved around the table to check on Hope. The man was dead, a clean shot to the chest. John checked his pulse to be sure, kicked his handgun away from his reach anyway. 

"Sherlock," John said, turning away from Hope and giving his partner his full attention. He looked somewhat stunned, frozen in inaction. The pill had dropped from his fingers, skittered away somewhere on the floor. 

Sherlock blinked at him, slowly as if awakening from some kind of dream. 

"Are you all right?" John asked again. 

"Yes," Sherlock said. "Yes." The second time, he sounded like he meant it. He crouched down, scanning the floor. John joined him. 

Sirens had begun to wail in the distance. Jennifer must have gotten through to the police. 

"There—" John said, pointing. The capsule had split open against the table leg, spilling its powdery contents on the stained carpet. 

Sherlock picked it up, carefully pinching it between his fingers. Then he hissed and dropped it again, stumbling backwards, holding his hand out in front of him as if burned. 

"Jesus," John said, grabbing at his hand. Tiny blisters had formed at the tips of his fingers. "Get that hand under cold water. Now." 

Sherlock obeyed without hesitation, disappearing out into the hallway. John dug into his pocket for a pair of latex gloves, snapping one on and carefully lifting up the broken pill to place in a plastic bag. 

The sirens were louder, now, converging on the parking lot. Car doors slammed outside. 

Sherlock reappeared in the doorway, holding his hand gingerly. 

"You all right?" John asked him again. He held up the little baggie he'd stored the pill in. 

"Yes," Sherlock said, but his face was pensive, unsettled. He looked down at his hand again, as if his fingers had betrayed him. 

There was a commotion in the hallway, the arrival of police on scene, and John squared his shoulders, ready to get to work. 

*

"We're going back to the motel," Sherlock said, half an hour later, pulling John aside from a conversation with one of the local police.

"What? Now?" John shook his head. "We can't. The scene—" 

"I just got a call. Someone trashed the morgue, John. Our samples, everything. It's all gone." 

John shook his head, stunned. "What?" 

"They burnt the place down. It's looking like an obvious case of arson, but—" 

"They burnt down the _morgue?"_ John goggled at him, then straightened up. "Lucy Ferrier's body—" 

"Gone." Sherlock said. "We have to go. Now. I have notes back at the motel. Photographs." 

"Right, yeah, okay," John said, excusing himself as they hurried towards their rental car. 

They sped down the road, wheels shimmying a little bit on damp pavement. Sherlock's face, lit by headlights of passing cars, was grim. 

Behind them, sirens began to wail. The cacophony grew in intensity, overtaking them as fire trucks thundered by, lights flashing. 

There was a sinking feeling making a home in John's stomach. He glanced back at Sherlock, saw the same mounting dismay registered on his face. 

They rounded the next bend and saw the fire trucks converging on the remains of their motel, which was being devoured by a hellish inferno. 

Sherlock stopped the car, got out, stood staring up at the roaring flames. 

John followed, stood beside him, their shoulders brushing. "There goes my laptop." 

"The x-rays and pictures," Sherlock said. He sounded lost, stunned. "The samples." 

As they stood watching, the roof began to cave in, sending up a fresh shower of sparks. Even from a safe distance, the heat was choking, overwhelming. 

"There's no evidence," Sherlock said. "Not with the body gone." 

"No," John said. He clenched his fist, turned away from the flames. "Philimore. His body wasn't in the morgue, remember? The funeral." 

Sherlock lifted his head. There was a sudden spark in his eye, a reflection from the inferno across the street. "John," he breathed. "You're a genius." 

He got back into the car without another word, John hastening to follow. 

The wheels skidded as Sherlock pulled back onto the highway. 

*

They went through the cemetery gates at a run, flashlight beams cutting through the fog. John nearly tripped over a headstone, slowed his pace a bit. Sherlock ran on ahead, a bright spark of bobbing light in the darkness. 

It had started to rain again. Icy water pelted against his face, streamed into his eyes.

The flashlight stopped its dizzying, swaying dance. John caught up, bumped against Sherlock's shoulder, followed his gaze. 

They were standing beside James Philimore's headstone. The recently filled ground in front of it had been disturbed again, torn up. 

John did not have to peer over the edge to know what he would see. 

An empty grave. 

"The others," he gasped out, too shocked to think of anything else. "From the car accident. Rachel." 

Sherlock nodded, turned away, skimmed his flashlight over the rows of stones. 

"There," he said, and then stopped. 

Rachel Stangerson's grave had been dug up too. 

"Jenkins," John said, but even as they ran through the rows of headstones, feet slipping in the mud and wet grass, he knew what they'd find. 

Another empty grave. 

"Now," Sherlock said, his chest heaving with exertion or shock or some combination of the two. His dark hair was soaked, plastered against his skull. "Do you believe me that there's something going on?" 

The burst of laughter tore out of John before he realized what was going to happen. He clamped a hand over his mouth.

Sherlock stared.

"Just—" John tried helplessly, and then he was laughing again, doubled over with it. Christ, he needed sleep. 

"You think I'm crazy," Sherlock said, and there was something defeated in his tone. 

"Well, yes," John said, bumping their shoulders together. "But—come _on._ Government-sanctioned arson? Grave robberies in the dead of night? What kind of—what—these things don't _happen_ in real life." 

A slow smile spread across Sherlock's face. "Real life. Boring." And then he was chuckling too, a rich, warm sound.

John stifled a fresh round of laughter, shaking his head. He nudged Sherlock's shoulder again. "Come on, we can't giggle, it's a graveyard." 

"I don't think they mind," Sherlock said, gesturing with his flashlight to the silent headstones. 

Then they were both snorting again, leaning against each other, breath fogging in the chill damp air. 

"Come on," Sherlock said, his voice serious once more, although John thought the tone seemed a bit warmer, this time around. "We've got work to do." 

*

_**Excerpt from field report of Special Agent John H. Watson.** _

_Jefferson Hope's assertion that Jennifer Wilson and her peers had been subject to experimental testing, including exposure to a so-called alien organism, remains unsubstantiated. His claims do bear more than a passing resemblance to the fragmented memories the surviving victims have described, although at this time none have been able to provide a clear picture of what went on during their three day disappearance._

_To date, there is no credible explanation for the location where Lucy Ferrier's body was discovered, nor for the state of her body when it was found. Evidence documented at the scene, as well as the later discovery of her wheelchair embedded in mud along the embankment three miles south of where the body was found, suggest that she walked, although the nature of her injuries renders this an unlikely if not impossible conclusion. The loss of the victim's remains precludes further evidence collection. Agent Holmes' theory that a separate entity took control of her body remains unsubstantiated._

_Charges have been pressed against the medical examiner, as well as the sheriff and a sheriff's deputy, for their part in covering up key evidence in the deaths of James Phillimore and Lucy Ferrier, including the forgery of a suicide note which was subsequently planted on Ferrier's body. They are currently cooperating with authorities in the investigation, but have, to date, not provided a compelling motive for their actions._

_Further inquiries have been made into the deaths of Beth Davenport and Jeffrey Patterson, but to date the families of both victims are resisting additional involvement. Efforts to exhume their remains for further study have been blocked. Officially, both Davenport and Patterson remain classified as suicides._

*

Section Chief Stamford was not pleased with his final report. John might not have had Sherlock's skill in reading people, but he wasn't an idiot. There was a pinched look on the man's face, a look that suggested either intense dismay, disapproval, or indigestion. 

It wasn't quite lunch time, yet, so he doubted very much that it was indigestion. 

"Do you feel this matter has been resolved satisfactorily?" he asked. 

John shifted in his seat. "Not entirely satisfactorily, sir, no." 

Stamford removed his glasses, massaged the skin between his brows. "In what way?" 

"Well," John said, and motion to his left caught his attention. He tilted his head slightly, watched as the silent man he recalled from his last time in Stamford's office came slinking in to lean against the filing cabinets. "The perpetrator was identified and stopped. Those that he colluded with in an effort to cover up evidence of his crimes have been arrested and charged. A young woman is alive, thanks to our investigative efforts, and she and the remainder of her classmates have been granted closure regarding a particularly upsetting period in their lives." 

"Am I mistaken?" an unfamiliar voice, clipped, almost mocking. The man by the filing cabinets. "It sounds as if the outcome you've just described can, in fact, be considered quite satisfactory."

"There is, of course, the question of what really happened to those kids when they went missing," John said. "Their recollections are compromised, and I fear that the truth died with Jefferson Hope. As did the chance to provide any real closure to the cases of Beth Davenport and Jeffrey Patterson." 

A soft rustle of fabric, the hushed _snick_ of a cigarette lighter. The man drew in a breath of smoke, exhaled slowly. 

"Also, there's the rather catastrophic loss of physical evidence connected to the case. Without it, I think the chances of finding out who Hope was working for are slim to none." 

"Working for?" Stamford asked. 

"He wasn't acting alone, of course," John said. "That's—I did put that in my report. Someone was feeding him orders." 

"You are aware that the blood tests on the surviving students all came back clear? That there was no sign of this so-called 'branched DNA' you referenced?" 

John smiled tightly, looked down. "I did hear that, yeah." 

"And that Jennifer Wilson, Helen Rance, Alice Charpentier and Eddie Drebber have all voluntarily agreed to enter into a treatment program at Raymon State Hospital? That they admit that their memories, the urges they have supposedly been _feeling_ , may have been triggered by extreme stress. Untreated PTSD following their abduction and return." 

The corner of John's mouth twitched humorlessly at the use of the word "abduction."

"As I said," John shrugged. "The matter has been resolved. It's just up for debate whether or not it's been resolved satisfactorily. I still have questions." 

_Not the least of which is how Eddie Drebber, who as far as I know is still in a coma, agreed to anything,_ he elected not to add. 

"So you believe these cases have merit." 

_Ah,_ John thought, _here we go._

"Something happened to those kids," he said, struggling to keep the anger out of his voice. "Agent Holmes' work saved Jennifer Wilson's life, and likely the lives of her remaining classmates. I might not—I might not be able to substantiate his more outrageous claims, but clearly there is a cause for further investigation." 

Stamford looked over at the smoking man. His expression was tight. The smoking man, in contrast, looked almost amused. 

"The evidence suggests—" Stamford began.

"The evidence was destroyed," John said, standing up. He reached into his jacket pocket, closed his fingers around the crisp edges of the envelope he carried. He withdrew it, set it carefully on the edge of Stamford's desk. "Except for this. The blood sample I drew from Lucy Ferrier. I had it in my pocket when we left the motel—it was the only piece of evidence not destroyed in the fire." 

Stamford picked up the envelope, frowned at it. He opened the flap, unfolded the sheet of paper within.

"I had our labs run a set of tests on it," John said. "Like I said, I'd had it in my pocket. The sample had degraded. But there was enough for our labs to run a PCR. And our labs returned the exact same results we'd seen in James Philimore's blood, results you'll see right there. Branched DNA." 

Stamford passed the paper to the smoking man, who regarded it with a disinterested eye.

"Agent Watson," Stamford said. "There is procedure for collecting evidence—" 

"Nothing about this case adheres to procedure," John said, bitter.

"In any event, if we were going to court, this evidence, evidence you kept in your _pocket_ —"

"I had those tests run for my own interest," John said. "And it was enough for me."

"Enough for you for what?" Stamford's voice was impatient, strained. 

"Enough for me to know that the official explanation has raised more questions than it has provided answers." 

Stamford looked at the smoking man again. The man carefully re-folded the test results, slipped the paper back into the envelope, tucked the envelope into his jacket pocket. 

"Well," Stamford said after a long pause, and his voice was distant, a clear dismissal. "We look forward to your next report." 

*

It was raining, a steady, miserable patter against the window. 

John lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling. It was creeping past two in the morning, but he could not sleep. 

_We look forward to your next report,_ Stamford had said. His voice had been vague, distracted. There had been none of the carefully cultivated compliments from their first meeting, no hints that his career was _going places_ if he performed well on his assignment. 

Ergo, he had not performed well. 

Or, at least, he had not performed in the manner in which they were expecting. Which was not quite the same thing at all. 

Christ, Sherlock was starting to make him paranoid. It was contagious. It had to be.

He groaned, rolled over on his side, stared at his blank walls. He had done the bare minimum with his apartment. A bed, a battered end table, a desk, a couch. A coffee table. He had not bothered to hang up any pictures. There were no curtains or window dressings, just utilitarian blinds that he drew against the sunlight.

The ugly motel room in Bellefleur had more character than his apartment. 

He shut his eyes, pressed his forearm over his face. He'd had this before, these fleeting feelings of transience, the sensation that he didn't belong in his own life, his own skin. 

He'd been useless since the war. He was useless as a doctor, and he'd been useless in the Bureau, taking up space, examining the occasional body, teaching the occasional class. Existing, day to day to day. Trying to hide his myriad tics and deficiencies, terrified of being caught out, exposed as a fraud. 

He hadn't felt useless in Bellefleur. 

His phone buzzed, vibrating and chattering its way across the end table. He rolled over to snatch it up. 

"Yeah?"

Silence on the other end.

He lifted the phone away, looked blearily at the screen. "Sherlock? Everything all right?" 

"You're—not asleep," Sherlock said. 

"No, not—not right now." 

"I hadn't realized it was this late." It sounded almost like an apology. Almost.

"No it's—it's fine. What is it?" 

"Lab results came in this afternoon. On the pill." 

"This afternoon?" John rubbed at his eyes, blinked at his alarm clock on the nightstand. "It's two twenty-one in the morning, Sherlock." 

"I've been thinking. Lost track of time." 

"Right," John said. "What did the tests say?" 

"It was a placebo," Sherlock said, his voice low, slow. "Nothing but inert ingredients." 

"That—" John said, shaking his head, sitting up, suddenly quite alert. "That doesn't make any sense. We both saw how it—it _burned_ you." 

"The imprint on the pill traces back to a company called Moriarty Pharmaceuticals. It was meant to be used in a double blind treatment study their researchers are conducting. Well. So they say." 

"Then how did it wind up in Bellefleur, Oregon?" 

"Hope was employed by Moriarty Pharmaceuticals. In their maintenance department. It appears that he had gotten himself mixed up in something of a side business—skimming quantities of drugs and reselling them. He must have inadvertently taken some of the placebo samples as well." 

"You don't really believe that," John said. His left hand had fisted into his sheets and he forced himself to breathe, to relax it. 

"It's a convenient cover story," Sherlock said. "Especially considering the lab results show nothing anomalous in the pill." 

"It burned you," John said again, frowning. Sherlock's fingers had blistered up, red and irritated. 

It was far too easy to imagine the same thing happening across his entire body, had he swallowed that capsule. Red welts rising on his skin, his eyes widening as his throat began to prickle and then close, fingers scratching ineffectually, desperately across pale flesh. 

Sherlock, brilliant, eccentric, Sherlock, dead from a reaction to—well, to _nothing_ , if the lab tests were to be believed. And even if it _had_ been something, it shouldn't have affected him, not if any of what Hope had said were true.

He was still breathing on the other end of the line, quiet, steady breaths. He didn't seem to have anything else to add. 

John wondered, briefly, if Sherlock hadn't just called him to pass on the information about the lab tests. Perhaps he'd been reaching out, in his own way. 

"More questions than answers, it seems," John said finally. He leaned back against his pillow, shut his eyes. There was something soothing about the rhythm of Sherlock's steady breaths. 

"Mm," Sherlock agreed. "Well. Best get used to it, if you're going to be sticking around." He paused. "Good night, John." 

John kept his phone cradled in his hand long after the connection had been severed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to drop by and say hi on [Tumblr](http://www.discordantwords.tumblr.com/)


	3. Housekeeping

*

Sherlock tipped back ever-so-slightly in his rolling chair, file folder open on the desk in front of him. He'd skimmed the contents, given a cursory glance at the crime scene photos.

Boring, he'd initially decided, although Assistant Director Lestrade had already let him know in no uncertain terms that rejecting assignments based on his interest level (or lack thereof) was not actually an option. So he'd looked through the folder, resigned himself to wasting his time on a dull case with dull victims and, in all probability, a dull resolution. 

He'd been despairing of this very fact, tossing pencils up at the soft drop-ceiling over his head, wondering if he could get away with sending John to investigate (surely, if they meant to saddle him with a partner, he could extract some benefit from the arrangement?) when his eyes had alighted on a familiar name in the report. And just like that, his entire morning had derailed. 

_Sebastian Wilkes._

Now there was a name he hadn't heard in a while. 

He'd sunk deep into thought when John arrived for the morning, toting two paper cups of coffee. 

There was steam rising from the cups. It smelled good. John had clearly gone to the coffee pot in the break room by the accounting department, then, up on the third floor, rather than taking the more convenient option by the stairwell. There was a joke in there about bean counters having the best beans, but Sherlock could never be bothered with remembering the punchline. Or perhaps that _was_ the punchline, and it was the setup he couldn't recall. No matter. 

John said something, likely a salutation or greeting of some kind, superfluous, easily ignored. 

He ignored the next two comments as well, almost certainly some inane observation about weather or traffic. 

He did glance up when one of his pencils detached from the ceiling and splashed down with near-perfect accuracy into John's coffee, but only because said coffee proceeded to slosh across the desk and soak the papers he'd had spread in front of him. 

"Careful!" he snapped, his full attention wrenched abruptly and jarringly into the present. 

"Careful?" John echoed, incredulous. He stopped mopping at the spilled coffee, gaped for a moment. Then he tipped his gaze towards the ceiling, where a half dozen other pencils dangled, waiting for an opportune moment to drop. 

"There are files," Sherlock said, lifting the folder up from the desk. A dribble of coffee, still warm, ran from the sodden pages to pool on the floor. 

He stared pointedly at John, who was looking angry for some reason. 

John tossed a mass of wet paper towels into the trash bin, followed by his empty coffee cup. He leaned over the desk, snatched up the cup he'd set in front of Sherlock, took a big sip. 

"That's mine," Sherlock frowned.

"Nope. Not anymore." 

"You don't even like sugar in your coffee." 

"Somehow, I think I'll manage." 

Sherlock frowned again, blotted the worst of the mess from the file, set it back down. 

John settled himself in one of the creaky wooden chairs across from the desk, took another sip of his coffee. He made a loud, satisfied sound, obviously designed solely to egg Sherlock on, as it was clear from the tightness around his mouth that he wasn't actually enjoying the taste. 

"Got a case, then?" John asked finally. The annoyance was gone from his voice. Perhaps he'd decided that depriving Sherlock of his morning caffeine fix had been sufficient punishment? 

"Assistant Director Lestrade dropped it off this morning," Sherlock said. 

John's mouth worked slightly, as if he wanted to say something but couldn't quite figure out what. He took another sip of coffee, made no effort to hide his grimace this time. 

"Is that how this arrangement typically works, then?"

"Hm?" Sherlock raised his brows. 

"AD Lestrade. He gives us assignments?" 

"Did they not teach you anything in the Academy?" 

John blew out a breath, a frustrated sound. "I just wanted to get the lay of the land. I knew they weren't going to have me reporting to Section Chief Stamford indefinitely." 

"Oh," Sherlock said, decided that seemed reasonable enough. "Our assignments mostly come down through AD Lestrade." 

"Mostly?"

Sherlock shrugged. "I've been granted a certain freedom to pursue my own interests. To a point." 

John nodded, taking that in. He moved to take another sip of coffee, thought better of it. "How can you drink this?" 

Sherlock blinked. "You want to talk about coffee?"

"No," John sighed, pushing the cup across the desk in Sherlock's direction. "I want to get this as far away from me as I possibly can. The smell alone is going to tip me into a diabetic coma." 

"You're a medical professional, surely you know that's not possible," Sherlock felt his lips twitch up into a smile as he reached for the coffee. Still warm. Perfect amount of sugar. 

"The case," John redirected, shaking his head. There was an odd look on his face. Fondness? The expression seemed as though it could be classified as fond. Although that didn't make much sense, considering that Sherlock had started off the day by torpedoing John's beverage with a sharpened pencil. 

"Looked boring at first. Might actually be something," he hedged. "Employees at a branch of Shad Sanderson appear to be losing their minds." 

"The bank?" John frowned, pulled the coffee-damp pages towards himself to read. "Losing their minds how?" 

"Various ways," Sherlock shrugged. "Odd behavior. The first time, it was considered an isolated incident and the employee was terminated, but it has, apparently, continued happening. The branch manager is concerned that there might be something deeper going on." 

"And this looked boring to you?" John was making an odd face. 

Ah, he'd found the crime scene photo, the one with the intestines and the copy machine, the photo that had propelled this entire mess into Sherlock's lap to begin with. 

"They're not human," Sherlock offered. "The intestines." 

"Yeah, I can see that, thanks," John said. 

"Lestrade has a tendency to foist off any cases that look _weird_ onto me."

"Yeah, well," John shrugged, gave him an odd smile. "Weird is… what you do, isn't it?" 

"No," Sherlock said, straightening up, offended. "I investigate legitimate instances of paranormal phenomena." 

"That's what I said," John said. His tone was teasing. Still fond. Fond? 

"Get your coat," Sherlock said. "We're going to the bank." 

*

The afflicted branch of Shad Sanderson was just outside of the D.C. metro area, not a long drive, even in traffic.

"So," John said, carefully paging through the still-damp file as Sherlock navigated morning rush hour, the smell of stale coffee permeating the car. "Three employees at this particular branch have begun behaving in unusual or irregular ways. Starting with one employee's inappropriate outburst in front of customers, continuing with an act of vandalism on company property, and culminating, most recently, with the—ah—bovine intestines in the copy machine." 

"Obtained from a local butcher shop," Sherlock said, with a surreptitious glance at John. "No one was actually out slaughtering any cows." 

"Well. Aside from the butcher." 

Sherlock swallowed, looked away before he could smile. "I meant in the office." 

"The first employee to show symptoms, Amanda Floris, had a stellar record. She'd been working as a teller for almost four years, no complaints. The notes say she arrived at work and grew progressively disruptive and disheveled in appearance throughout the course of the day, before finally shouting at a customer and trashing her own desk area. She was fired on the spot." John frowned, scratched at his cheek. "Well. Stress at home and work can tend to manifest in surprising ways—" 

"Read on, John," Sherlock said, smiling a little bit. "No sense theorizing without all the facts." 

"Is this—should I not do this out loud?" John sat up straighter in his seat, adjusted his tie. "You've already read this over, and you're probably thinking, and—" 

"It's fine," Sherlock said. And then, surprising himself, "It helps, actually. Hearing it from another perspective."

"Oh," John said, tugging at his tie again. "All right." He looked back down at the folder. "Um. Two days after Floris was fired, another teller began showing the same—symptoms, I suppose. Brian Lukis. Walked away from his desk and, after shouting at a customer over a minor disagreement, went into the restroom with a can of spray paint and. Well. Sprayed it. Caught a security guard in the face when they tried to intervene." 

"Symptoms," Sherlock murmured, turning John's word choice over in his mind. He looked up, saw John looking at him. "Go on."

"Ahm, things were quiet again for a few days, and then the branch manager, Sebastian Wilkes, arrives for work yesterday morning to find a third teller, Eddie Van Coon, smeared with blood and shouting nonsense in the waiting area. He called police, and upon further investigation, discovered the—well. The intestines in the copy machine. Van Coon was initially held on suspicion of murder, but analysis revealed the remains were not human and had, in fact, been obtained the night before from a local butcher shop. As you mentioned." 

John shut the folder, looked expectantly at Sherlock. "So. Theory?" 

"You assume I have one?" 

"Well," John said. "Yes." 

Sherlock pursed his lips. "You said _symptoms._ Before. Why did you choose that word in particular to describe Lukis's behavior?" 

John scratched the side of his head. "Well. One employee displaying odd behavior is an anomaly. Multiple employees is a pattern. Have they been tested for drugs?" 

"All clear." 

"Well," John said. "I guess we'll know more when we get there." 

*

Sherlock breezed through the glass doors, John on his heels. 

He scanned the area, taking quick note of everything he could see. Large lobby, marble floors. Tasteful, forgettable art on beige walls. Neutral colors, calming, indistinct. The tellers were situated along the back wall, behind a thick plexiglass partition. Behind the partition, a metal security door, requiring keycard access, likely leading to the back offices, restrooms and vault. There were three open desks along the left wall, comfortable yet utilitarian chairs. Large corner office on the right, close to the door, partially glass-walled, ostentatious. _Wilkes._

The man himself was strolling towards him, tugging at his tie. He wore an uncomfortable smile. A name badge, plastic, thick (more than a badge, keycard most likely), was clipped to the lapel of his suit jacket. 

He'd put on weight, since school. Lost muscle definition. His suit and shoes were expensive, in style. His watch, expensive, a recent model, not an older piece with sentimental value. He was tanned—Sherlock glanced quickly at where his shirt collar pulled away from his neck—no tan lines. Tanning beds, then, not an outdoorsman. Fingernails clean, well-manicured. No calluses. The only exercise he was getting these days was lifting his pen to sign documents. 

John was pulling his ID out of his jacket pocket. "Agent Watson, FBI—" 

"Yes, yes, can you put that away please? There are some matters best discussed in private," Wilkes said, holding out his hands, shifting his eyes around to see if anyone had noticed them. "Please, step into my office." 

He gestured towards the room from which he'd just emerged. His office. His highly visible office, with its glass walls. 

"Not particularly private, is it?" Sherlock asked dryly.

Wilkes opened his mouth to respond, got a good look at Sherlock's face, did a double take. He shut his mouth, shook his head. A slow smirk crept onto his face. "Well. This _is_ a surprise. Holmes, isn't it?" 

John gave a little start in his peripheral vision. Sherlock ignored him, extended his hand, shook smoothly. "Sebastian. I believe you were showing us to your office?" 

Wilkes tugged his tie again, an old motion, familiar. Sherlock could see him, vividly, tugging on his uniform tie in class, unconscious, whenever he held the teacher's attention. 

"Soo Lin," Wilkes called over his shoulder, catching the attention of a dark-haired young woman at a nearby desk. "Hold my calls." 

They followed Wilkes into his office, settled into two rather comfortable leather chairs in front of his desk. John's confusion was evident in the stiff way he held himself.

It was distracting. Why was it distracting? Sherlock was used to people being confused around him. 

"I suppose it's no big surprise you wound up in law enforcement," Wilkes said, settling back into his own chair (high-backed, leather, overstuffed and overpriced.) He turned towards John, tugged on his tie again, grinned. "Holmes here always did have a knack for digging up the worst sort of information about people." 

"You two know each other, then?" John asked, looking between the two of them. 

"Yes, John, good deduction," Sherlock spoke just as Wilkes said—

"We were at school together. Years ago." 

"Ah," John said, flashed a tight grin. He went to his pocket for his note pad, clicked his pen. A nervous gesture. (Nervous? Why nervous? Wilkes was hardly dangerous.) He shifted in his seat. "Small world. In any case, Mr. Wilkes—" 

"Amazing you can stand to work with him," Wilkes said, still grinning. He'd angled himself towards John slightly, his smile conspiratorial, encouraging John to get in on the joke. "Must be horrible. He was something of a freak back in our school days. Not the sort of thing you really grow out of, is it?" 

Sherlock opened his mouth to respond and was mildly horrified to realize that the words would not come. He blinked. 

Years ago, they'd walked the same halls. Wilkes, perpetually smirking, carrying himself like he was king of the world. Wilkes, who had discovered Sherlock's sore spot, his pressure point, the uncomfortable secret of his childhood tragedy, and who had delighted in exploiting it at every turn. 

"Mr. Wilkes, we're here regarding the recent incidents that have occurred in your branch," John said, his voice hard. Determined John. Steady John. So keen to remain focused. 

"Yes, I'd like this resolved quickly," Wilkes said, tearing his eyes away from Sherlock, returning his attention to John. "This sort of thing is bad for business." 

"Have any of the three employees involved displayed similar behavior in the past?" 

"No," Wilkes said. "Model employees, all three of them." 

"Any reason to believe they were unhappy with their jobs? That they'd want to damage the company in any way?" 

"No," Wilkes said, looking almost comically offended. "Of course not. This is a wonderful place to work." 

"Have you had any threats, anything at all, recently?" 

"No," Wilkes said. "Look, are we going to go down your entire list? None of these people ever acted crazy until they suddenly lost their damn minds in a very public way. It's upsetting my customers. It's upsetting senior management. Three years in a row, we've been recognized by our corporate offices as Branch of the Year. It's a prestigious honor. The bonus from the last round bought me my Jag." 

John licked his lips, scowling. He gave Sherlock a look, a meaningful look, one that seemed to say _can you believe this guy?_

Sherlock blinked, confused, and then set that aside in favor of the case. 

"Fascinating, I'm sure," he said, straightening up in his chair. His voice came out haughty, a bit bored, just as he'd intended. "And you don't suppose that your employees might have been—oh, I don't know—annoyed? By that? Perhaps deliberately sabotaging your chances this time around?" 

"Why on earth would they do that?" Wilkes looked utterly shocked. 

"Couldn't possibly imagine," Sherlock said, and was pleased, _pleased!_ when John let out an amused little snort. 

Pleased. Ridiculous. He had to get a grip on himself, immediately. 

"Can we see the site of the most recent incident?" John asked, interrupting whatever Wilkes was gearing up to say. 

"You'll need access to the back offices," Wilkes said, seemingly disinclined to continue assisting. He touched the badge clipped to his suit jacket, nails worrying at the roughened edge where the plastic had begun to peel apart. "Keycard only. My assistant will show you through. Soo Lin!" 

The dark-haired woman he'd spoken to earlier appeared at the door, hands clasped in front of her. She looked to be of Chinese descent, early to mid-twenties. She did not make eye contact with Wilkes, stood with her hands clasped in front of her, meek, deferential. Sherlock wondered if that was her normal demeanor, or simply something she projected around Wilkes, a subconscious bow to his preferences. 

"Sir?" she asked. 

"Show Agent Holmes and—sorry, what was your name?" 

"Watson," John said. He was gritting his teeth, his demeanor stiff, polite. 

"—Agents Holmes and Watson to the copy room, will you? And bring me a fresh coffee on your way back, mine's gone cold." 

Soo Lin nodded, smiled tentatively in their direction. 

There was a gleam of something else in her eye, something lively. A fleeting annoyance. The deferential demeanor for Wilkes's benefit, then. She found him as insufferable as John seemed to. 

Interesting. No one had seemed to find Wilkes insufferable when they were younger. 

"It's back here," she said, walking with confidence, authority. She swiped her key card, led them down a nondescript hallway. "Staff bathrooms are on the left. That's where Brian—well. But the copy room, that's what you'll be wanting to see. That's through here." 

The intestines had been cleared away, but rusty streaks of dried gore remained on the machine, which had been unplugged and moved away from the wall, surrounded by a perimeter of police tape. 

"Someone is supposed to come by today and take that away," she said, wrinkling her nose. 

"He did this overnight?" John asked, crouching to examine the machine. He snapped latex gloves onto his hands, opened the front door, grimaced at the viscera that had been run through the gears. He sat back on his heels. "Well. That's one way to jam a copier." 

"Eddie usually opened up weekday mornings," Soo Lin said. "He'd never—um. He'd never done anything like this before." 

John laughed, once, an agreeing sound. "If he had, I'd argue that your employee conduct policy was a bit too lenient." 

Sherlock's lip tugged upward, sharply, unconscious. He'd been doing that a lot, lately. It was unsettling, the way that John prised reactions out of him with no effort at all. 

"The bathroom," he said, turning away from John, hiding his traitorous face. "To the left, you said?" 

"Right through there," Soo Lin pointed, and he strode off without looking back, coat sweeping behind him. 

*

John watched Sherlock go, frowning at his sudden departure. He'd been conducting himself oddly since they'd arrived at the bank, looking disturbingly like a kicked puppy in the face of some mild insults from the smarmy branch manager instead of verbally eviscerating him the way that John had been expecting. 

"The bathroom that Brian Lukis vandalized," John said to Soo Lin. "Has it been cleaned?" 

"No," she said, shaking her head. "It's awful." 

He'd seen the photographs, the yellow paint across beige tiles, angry phrases and incoherent smears of color. 

"The report said it happened during working hours?" 

"Yes. Brian seemed—he seemed a little off. Upset. But we all have bad days, no one really paid much attention. And then it was like—it was like he just lost his mind. He started shouting the most horrible things at a customer, then said he needed to cool off. He went into the bathroom. We left him alone. But we could—we could hear him. Screaming. Kicking the walls. Breaking the mirrors. So one of the guards went in to try and calm him down and got a face full of spray paint for his trouble." 

John winced in sympathy. "Did Lukis have any problems that you knew about? Substance abuse? Anything all that could explain his behavior?" 

She shook her head, gave him a tremulous smile. There were tears pooling in her dark eyes. "It felt like my brother all over again." 

"Your brother?" John flipped to a fresh page in his notepad. 

"Oh," she said, embarrassed. "No, it's not—nothing to do with this place. I shouldn't have brought it up. It's just… Brian's behavior, and then Eddie's. It reminded me of my brother. He was in the army." 

John raised his brows, nodded. "Overseas?"

"Iraq," she said. "For a few years. He wasn't the same when he came home. Different. Angry. Erratic. Like all of the joy had gone out of him." 

"That can happen," John said carefully. 

"It scared me, with him. Like he came back an entirely different person. He's getting help now. I just never expected to see that sort of thing at work." 

"And how long have you worked here?" 

"I've been Mr. Wilkes's assistant for almost four years now," she said.

"Your boss—Wilkes—he says the branch has been receiving some kind of corporate award the past few years. He implied you were in line for it again before the current troubles started." 

She looked at him for a moment. There was something in her expression he couldn't quite parse. 

"Branch of the Year," she said, finally. "There are plaques on the wall. In the lobby. We've exceeded corporate targets and expectations for the past several years. It reflects very well on Mr. Wilkes." 

"There's a bonus involved, yes?" 

"Yes," she said, watching him carefully. "Corporate issues an incentive to the winning branch. It's up to the branch manager to decide how to best allocate the funds." 

John nodded, pursed his lips. "And, let me guess. Wilkes has allocated himself the funds for the past three years?" 

"He did buy us lunch last year," she said, gave him a little smiling shrug. The effect was disarming. 

"Do you think anyone here might have felt unhappy with the way that Mr. Wilkes chose to handle the bonus distribution?" 

She shrugged again. "Unhappy, sure. Unhappy enough to do something like this? No. We all need our jobs, Agent Watson. None of us would do anything to jeopardize that." 

*

The bathroom was small, nondescript. Tile floors, tan, eight-by-eight. Two stalls with olive green walls, two urinals, a sink. Unremarkable, save for the explosion of graffiti. 

Brian Lukis had gone rather overboard with the spray paint. 

Nonsense phrases, lewd pictures, swear words dripped from the walls in vivid, smeary yellow. Not a single surface had been left unspoiled. He'd even painted the toilet paper. 

He'd shattered the mirrors, too, and Sherlock gave the piles of broken glass a wide berth. 

He studied the walls, tried to imagine the kind of fervent emotional state one would have to be in to do this much damage in such a short period of time. 

Impulsive, certainly. But bank tellers did not typically carry spray paint on them at the office. Premeditated to some degree? Egged on? 

The door creaked open behind him. John, he supposed, come to see the scene for himself. 

"Oh!"

Female voice, startled, decidedly not John. 

He turned, found himself facing an elderly woman with a kind face. She was pushing a cart of cleaning supplies. 

The woman smiled apologetically at him, her hand pressed against her chest. "Sorry dear," she said, softspoken, polite. "Housekeeping. Didn't realize anyone was in here." 

"This is a crime scene," Sherlock said, although that wasn't entirely true. The damage had already been thoroughly documented by the bank, the perpetrator identified. Not much left to do but clean up, move on. 

"Is it?" She came over to stand next to him, tutted a bit at the nonsense on the walls. "Oh, such a mess. They said I could clean it up a bit." She wrung her hands together in sudden distress. "Oh, Mr. Holmes, I worry that none of the customers will ever come back. 

He blinked, looked sharply at her. "How did you know my name?" 

"Oh, I know a good deal about you, Mr. Holmes," she said, the distress bleeding out of her voice, replaced by something sly. 

"Ah," he said, smiling a little, looking back at the wall. His gaze fixed on angry, looping letters inviting someone named Rebecca to fellate a pig. "Not a housekeeper after all." 

"I'm afraid not. Although—" there was a hint of mirth in her voice. "That's not a bad name, all things considered. I _do_ find myself cleaning up my share of messes. Always have." She giggled, put one hand up to her mouth, the gesture at once girlish and calculated. "The Housekeeper. A bit like those informants in the old spy pictures, don't you think? Or like that Watergate fellow, Deep Throat—oh, you're too young to remember that, of course." 

"Just because I was born after certain events doesn't mean I am entirely ignorant of history," Sherlock said. 

"True enough," she agreed. "I meant no offense." 

He studied her for a moment. The nondescript gray janitor's jumpsuit was convincingly worn at the knees and elbows, frayed at the edges. Her skin was pale, paper-thin, spotted with age. There were no calluses on her hands. Her fingernails neat, short. 

"You've contacted me in the past," he said, speaking slowly, still reading her. "You're the one who sent me the photos from Bellefleur. The one showing the true state of the victim's body." 

She smiled at him, crossed her arms. "I've taken an interest in your work, Mr. Holmes. And I'll endeavor to help you wherever possible, but I must insist that you walk away from this case." 

"What? Why?" 

"Well. As they say in the movies, I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you." 

"That would be tremendously ambitious of you," he said. 

"Would it?" She gave him an oddly knowing little look. 

He didn't answer, instead turned his attention back to the graffiti-strewn walls. The name Rebecca had been repeated a lot, he noted. 

"I'm in a position to know a good deal," she said. "But you're exposing yourself to unnecessary risk on this case. I can't help you. I urge you to walk away." 

He shook his head, focus on the graffiti. "I can't do that." 

"I don't want to see you jeopardize your future," she said. There was something sad in her voice. She turned away from him, went out the door, moving at a brisk pace that belied her age. She left the cart behind. 

He hurried after her, shoving past the cart. It was large, unwieldy, blocked the doorframe for precious seconds. Frustrated, he shoved it aside, bottles clanking together. 

The hallway was empty. 

John appeared in the copy room doorway. He frowned. "Sherlock? You all right?" 

"Yes," he said, straightening his suit jacket. "Yes, of course. I'd like to meet with the tellers." 

*

Andy Galbraith was young, slim, fidgety. He wore a cheap suit, ill-fitting (too short in the leg, mismatched socks peeking out over scuffed loafers as he stood behind the counter. Insufficient data to determine if the mismatched socks were a genuine error or an ill-advised attempt at forced quirkiness.)

He had a slightly harassed air about him, a nervous energy that thrummed under his skin as he flitted back and forth, helping customers, answering questions from new staff in training. 

"We're hiring new staff," Soo Lin explained. "Andy's handling the training for us." 

"Andy looks a little on edge," John said, and Sherlock shot him an approving glance. 

"Oh," Soo Lin said, and she frowned. "No. He's just like that." 

After extracting Andy from behind the counter, they set up in a little conference room in the back offices. 

"Not the kind of thing you expect to deal with at work," Andy said, gave a self-conscious little laugh. "I mean, it's a stressful job, sure. Dealing with the public all day long." 

"Had your coworkers shown any signs that the stress was getting to them recently?" John asked. He had his little notepad out again. 

Galbraith shrugged. "Nothing too serious. I mean, no one's a hundred percent happy at work all the time, right?" 

Sherlock, who frequently spent his evenings and weekends in the office reading through interesting case files, felt this type of blanket statement was both erroneous and offensive. In the interest of efficiency, he elected not to voice his dissent. 

"Who's Rebecca?" he asked instead. 

John glanced curiously in his direction. 

"Brian's wife," Galbraith said. "Well. Soon to be ex-wife." 

"Much of the graffiti was directed at her." 

"Yeah," Galbraith shrugged. "He's been a little upset. It's been hard for him. But not—I mean, no one thought he was going to snap or anything. He's never been that kind of guy." 

"What about Van Coon?" 

"Eddie?" Galbraith laughed, shook his head. "It's the weirdest thing. Eddie was a vegan. He wouldn't have _touched_ cow intestines if his life depended on it, let alone gone to a butcher shop to buy them. What would make him do something like that?" 

*

They'd left the bank, Sherlock keeping his eyes straight ahead and ignoring Wilkes, who'd attempted to flag them down through the glass wall of his office. 

If John had noticed, he didn't comment. 

"What now?" John had asked, when they'd pulled back onto the road. 

Sherlock had suggested they meet with the three terminated employees, and they'd spent the remainder of the afternoon doing just that. 

Amanda Floris had served them coffee in the rather bland living room in her apartment, her face pale and worried, lips chapped. 

"I don't know why I did what I did," she'd told them, shaking her head, worrying at her lower lip with her teeth. "I've never—I've never behaved like that. It was all just so. So suddenly upsetting. I couldn't stand it anymore." 

"The customer you'd shouted at," Sherlock had said, leaning forward in his chair, watching as her face betrayed her, twitching into emotion where she clearly intended to hold herself steady. "Was it someone you knew?" 

She'd blinked at him, startled, caught off guard. "No," she said, and she chewed her lip again.

He'd caught John's eye for a moment, before leaning in again. "Did he look like someone you knew?" 

"I—" she shut her eyes, nodded. "Just for a moment. He looked like someone I—someone I used to know. And all of this anger rose up and I—I just—" She bit her lip, opened her eyes. They'd been swimming with tears. "It wasn't him. I saw the video of—of what I did, how I acted. The poor man I shouted at didn't even really look like—he didn't look like him at all. He just had the same color hair." 

She'd begun crying, and John had moved to offer sympathy (he'd procured tissues, somehow—when? From where? It was inconceivable that Sherlock hadn't noticed him doing so). 

After meeting with Amanda, they'd moved on to Brian Lukis, who'd refused them entry. 

"No," he said. "No way. No. I'm not speaking to anyone without my lawyer." 

Considering the man was facing an assault charge for blasting a security guard in the face with spray paint, Sherlock could not find much fault with his reasoning. 

They'd continued on to Eddie Van Coon, who'd paced and stalked around his townhouse with a nervous, manic speed that had even Sherlock slightly on edge. He could feel the tension vibrating off of John, to his left, the solider in him ready to leap into action. 

"This isn't me," Van Coon had said. "I'm not like this. I do yoga. I'm a calm person. I haven't had a hamburger since I was nine years old. I'm not the kind of person who would—who would buy a bucket of—of—and—"

"Did you like your job, Eddie?" John had asked, his voice level. 

Van Coon had stopped his pacing, shrugged. "Sure. It was fine. Paid the bills." 

"More than that," Sherlock had said, looking around. The furnishings, the art, everything in the townhouse had been selected with a certain refined care. "You were looking to advance. There was a branch manager job in your future, wasn't there?" 

"How—" 

Sherlock had waved him off. Ordinarily, he enjoyed showing off the means in which he'd reached his conclusions, but he hadn't had patience for it just then. Not when he was trembling right on the precipice of understanding. 

"Yeah," he'd said. "There were—rumors. That Sebastian Wilkes was about to get a big promotion up into corporate. I was in line for his office." 

"Mm," Sherlock had said, filing that detail away. He'd heard the sound of John's pen scratching on paper. 

*

"Let's get takeout," Sherlock said later, as they inched through traffic back towards FBI Headquarters. He did not take his eyes off the road. "Come back to my apartment. We can go over some of the finer details. I think it's fairly obvious we're dealing with some sort of drug, although who's administering it is still unclear." 

Getting clearer, though. He suspected he'd have it figured out by morning. 

"Oh," John said, looking down at his watch. "I—heh. I can't, actually. I've got a date tonight." 

Sherlock's mind briefly blanked. "What?" 

"A date. Friend of one of my academy classmates. I'm supposed to meet her for dinner tonight. We've been trying to coordinate our schedules forever." He laughed, shook his head, as if what he was saying was utterly unremarkable. 

It _was_ utterly unremarkable. Wasn't it? Boring people did this all the time. 

"But—" Sherlock said. "You're working." 

"Ah, no," John said. "I've _been_ working, all day. At some point, I can reasonably expect to get a few hours to, you know. Eat. And sleep." 

"That's what I was suggesting," Sherlock said. It came out rather more petulant than he'd intended.

"No," John said, smiling that bewildering fond smile of his. "It's really not." 

*

Jeanette met him at the restaurant entrance, dark hair falling in gentle waves around her face. She was tall, slim, lovely. 

They settled in at their table, taken turns perusing the menu. 

"It's nice to finally have a chance to meet up," John said, taking a sip of his wine and smiling. 

"I've heard a lot about you," Jeanette said, smiling back. 

His phone buzzed in his pocket, making him jump. He frowned down at it, shot Jeanette an apologetic look.

"Sorry," he said. "My partner. We're on a case. I have to take this." 

"Of course," she said, waving him off.

He lifted his phone to his ear, pushed away from the table, made his way towards a quieter spot in the back of the restaurant. 

"Sherlock? Everything all right?" 

"John," Sherlock's voice was measured and calm. "I started running background checks on all of the Shad Sanderson employees—" 

John squeezed his eyes shut, rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Is this actually urgent, Sherlock, or is it something that can wait until tomorrow." 

"Soo Lin Yao's brother has military connections." 

"Yes, I know," John said, irritated. "She told me." 

Silence from Sherlock. Then: "You didn't share that with me." 

"There was nothing to share. She mentioned it in passing. He doesn't have anything to do with this." 

"Then why did she mention him?" 

John sighed. "She mentioned he'd been angry since coming back from Iraq. That the type of erratic behavior she witnessed in her coworkers reminded her of him." 

"John—" 

"Sherlock," John said. "Could this possibly, _possibly_ wait until later?" 

"John, Soo Lin Yao's brother never saw active combat!" Sherlock's voice rose with excitement. "He's a medical doctor, works in classified military research based out of Liberty, Indiana—"

"Sherlock—"

"Baskerville, John, code name Baskerville, have you ever heard of it? There are an astonishing number of conspiracy theories that surround it—rumors that they're using alien technology, that they're developing secret bioweapons. In certain circles, it's even more famous than Area 51." 

"Sherlock," John said, firm. "I am hanging up now. We will discuss this in the morning." 

"This isn't an isolated case, John. The US military is involved—" 

"Involved in _what?_ " John snapped, offered an apologetic look to a passing waiter, lowered his voice. "Stressing out some office workers? Denying your old buddy Sebastian Wilkes another big year end bonus? Don't you think the US military might possibly have a few more pressing priorities?" 

Silence. A loaded silence. Sherlock breathed in. 

"You're offended." 

"I'm not offended, Sherlock, I'm annoyed," John said. "I told you I had plans this evening, and—" 

"No. You're offended by my suggestion that there may be a military connection. You take it personally." He let out a hiss of air, and exulted breath of realization. "Oh, you carry your convictions very close to the heart, don't you? It _bothers_ you to think that the men you took orders from might not have been entirely on the level. You—" 

John ended the call, stood glaring down at his phone for a long moment. Then he shut his eyes, scrubbed at his face with the heels of his hands, attempted to put himself back in something resembling a sociable mood. 

"Everything all right?" Jeanette asked when he got back to their table. She had finished her glass of wine. 

"Oh, yeah, he's just—just checking in," he smiled, hoped it didn't look as forced as it felt. 

His phone began buzzing again. Jeanette raised her brows. 

Still smiling, feeling it begin to crack around the edges, John turned his phone off, dropped it back into his pocket. 

"If you have to go—" she started. 

"No, no," he shook his head firmly. "No, of course not." 

She smiled, nodded, looked down at the table. 

Silence fell between them, thick, uncomfortable. He found he didn't quite have anything to say. 

*

Soo Lin Yao lived alone in a well-maintained apartment complex in Georgetown. 

Odd, that. A bit out of her price range, assuming her only income was the salary she earned as Wilkes's assistant. And she had, according to John, implied that she very much needed her job. 

John. 

John was no longer answering his phone. He was ignoring his texts. 

Sherlock had irritated him, clearly. To be expected. He irritated everyone. 

Why was he dwelling on it? It was irrelevant. Everything about John was irrelevant, including how he spent his time away from the office and who he spent that time with. 

Soo Lin Yao was the key to this case. He just needed to find out why. And how.

Presently, she was spending her evening in an exceedingly boring manner. 

He'd driven to her neighborhood following his frustrating phone conversation with John, had parked on a tree-lined street directly across from her apartment. He'd bided his time, watching, waiting for John to come to his senses and call him back. 

Hours had passed. 

Soo Lin had done nothing more interesting than turn on, and then off, a lamp in her living room. 

He shifted in his seat, stretched, blinked bleary eyes. He looked down at his phone, checked the time. Going on ten o'clock. His stomach rumbled. He ignored it. 

John hadn't called him back. 

He looked back up towards the window. If Soo Lin Yao _was_ a criminal, truly she'd go down in history as the most boring one ever to be recorded in the annals of crime. Ever. 

He should go. Clearly, she wasn't going to do anything interesting. 

He sighed, tossed his phone aside, reached for the ignition. Headlights flashed behind him and he froze, watching in the mirror as a dark sedan pulled up on the side of the road, inching up very close behind his car. 

The sedan idled for a moment, shut off. Someone got out, slammed a door. 

Sherlock tensed, watching in the mirror, hand straying for his gun. 

The figure (male, small build, athletic) did not approach his car. He did not so much as glance in Sherlock's direction, simply tugged his coat around him and hurried towards the building. 

He passed under a streetlight, the warm yellow glow briefly illuminating his face.

Yao. 

Sherlock jolted to full attention, watched as Yao pressed the buzzer and was admitted into the building. He glimpsed movement in Soo Lin's window as she, presumably, abandoned whatever dreadfully dull pursuit she'd been engaged in and went to let him in. 

For one fleeting, glorious moment, Soo Lin and her brother were framed in the window, perfectly lit by the soft glow of a tableside lamp, engaged in serious discussion. 

Sherlock snapped a photo with his phone. 

Soo Lin said something that her brother did not like. He shook his head, turned away. She followed him, and both disappeared from sight. 

They did not reappear in the window again.

*

Sherlock arrived at the office before the sun had fully edged over the horizon. He fetched himself a cup of coffee and retreated into his basement lair. 

He'd eventually called it a night, gone back to his own apartment, stretched out on the sofa to do some thinking. As he'd lain there, he'd dialed John a handful of times, each call going directly to voicemail. 

At around four o'clock, he'd given up trying to get in touch with John, as well as the hope of getting any proper thinking done. The dark quiet of his apartment, normally perfect for such occasions, had seemed claustrophobic, stifling. So he'd showered, readied himself, and gone in to work. 

He shifted in his rolling chair, looked up at the ceiling, contemplated adding more pencils. 

John wouldn't be in for hours yet. 

He wanted to talk through his theory, wanted John there while connected the dots and put it all together. He couldn't think in all of this silence. 

That troubled him. He'd never had trouble with solitude in the past. He'd preferred it. 

He hadn't wanted a partner. He'd been annoyed by the assignment. It had been a transparent attempt on the part of his superiors to discredit his work. 

He'd fully intended to send John screaming for the hills before he'd even gotten the chance to finish writing his first field report. 

Instead, he'd found himself _liking_ John. Enjoying his company, to an extent. He did not particularly want to see John go running for the hills. Not if it meant he'd be left behind. 

And that. That was—

"Got it all figured out, then?" 

Sherlock dropped his coffee cup onto the desk. 

Thankfully, it was only half-full, and instead of spilling everywhere simply sloshed up around the rim. 

He hadn't heard John come in. 

_He_ hadn't heard John come in. 

John was standing in the doorway, holding coffees (two cups, _two_ , one clearly meant for Sherlock, a peace offering of sorts), wearing an uncomfortable smile. 

"You're here early," John said, nodding down at the coffee that Sherlock had just unceremoniously dropped onto the desk. "Guess you beat me to it." 

Sherlock stared at the cup in front of him, blinking, then looked to the cups John was holding. His brain was moving at a distressingly slow pace. "Did you get that from the break room by Accounting?" 

John shook his head, turned one of the cups so Sherlock could see the lettering on the side. He'd stopped at a coffee shop on his way in. Fresh brewed. It smelled _wonderful._

Sherlock blinked again, sprang into action. He swept his half-drunk cup into the waste basket next to the desk. "Cold." 

John smiled again, less awkward this time, and set the fresh cups down on the desk. He sat down in his chair across from Sherlock, took a steadying breath. 

"Sherlock, I'm sorry about—" 

Sherlock shut his eyes. He'd been thinking about this all morning. He'd been thinking about _this_ , and not their case. If he listened to John now, he'd spend the entire rest of the day dissecting his words, not caring one whit about anything else. 

"No matter," he said, waving his hand, casual, dismissive, abrupt. He took a quick sip of his coffee and the taste was so good that his lips pulled up into a quick, genuine smile that he was unable to quash. He coughed, looked down. "All in the past. Thank you for the coffee." 

The look John gave him was slightly bewildered. 

Bewildered. Bewildered? Why? 

No, not the time. The case. Concentrate. 

"I spent some time watching Soo Lin's apartment last night," he said, taking another gulp of coffee. 

"Oh," John said, and the bewilderment faded back to discomfort. "Oh, you—I didn't realize you were going to—I should have—" 

"It was a spur of the moment decision," Sherlock said, gave another hand wave for emphasis. "You weren't necessary. She leads a remarkably dull life." 

"Not sure what you were expecting," John said. "On a Wednesday night." 

"Didn't stop you from having a busy evening," Sherlock said. 

John opened his mouth, shut it again. He seemed to struggle for words. 

"Never mind," Sherlock said hastily. "Soo Lin Yao. Boring. Did absolutely nothing of interest for hours. And then her brother arrived." 

John blinked. "Her brother."

"Yes, the one she told you about. The army man whose post-discharge anger issues frightened her so very badly," Sherlock said. "The one who's actually working on confidential bioweapon research." 

"It's not an impossible stretch that she'd see her brother, Sherlock, it's not like she told me he was dead." 

"She didn't seem uncomfortable in his presence." 

"And you could tell this from street level?" 

"He's not some traumatized veteran, John," Sherlock snapped, suddenly impatient. He'd been waiting all morning for John to show up, and now he was there and instead of being helpful he was being disagreeable. "She told you a lie. A lie calculated to gain your sympathy. You have a knee-jerk reaction to criticism of our armed forces because of your own personal convictions, and it's left you completely blind to the truth of this situation." 

"And you're just trying to show off for someone who was mean to you in high school, so where does that leave you?" 

Sherlock froze. 

John shut his eyes. Pinched his brow. His entire frame seemed to deflate, and he sagged back into the chair. "Jesus. I'm—Sherlock, I'm sorry. That wasn't. That wasn't—" 

The desk phone rang.

John closed his mouth. Squeezed at his brow again with his thumb and forefinger. 

The phone rang again. 

Sherlock grabbed at it. "What." 

"I don't suppose it's too much to ask that my taxpayer dollars go to some form of sensitivity training for you people, is it?" Wilkes, posturing on the other end of the line, his tone falsely offended, wounded. 

"Who is it this time?" Sherlock asked, ignoring him. 

John had turned away, his shoulders hunched, tense, unhappy. He was breathing through his nose, angry. Sherlock had provoked him. 

It was good, in a way, to know that he had a breaking point. That he could be pushed. 

It had been discomfiting, not knowing where the lines were. Most people let Sherlock know immediately that he had crossed them, but John had been more difficult to read. John had laughed with him in a graveyard, in the rain, for one. And had furtively stolen a blood sample from a dead girl while looking somewhat pleased about it, for another. 

The not knowing had bothered him. He hated not knowing things. Waiting and wondering what would be the thing that finally tipped John over into actually finding him insufferable had felt akin to being dropped, blindfolded, into the middle of a minefield. 

Now, at least, he didn't have to wait for the explosion. John was angry with him. John was disgusted with him. John, with his clear patriotism and ordered thinking. John had gotten through his time at war believing he was one of the Good Guys. Shaking the foundation of that belief would shake John, too. 

John would go ahead and write a well-crafted report on why Sherlock's theories were nonsense, why the X Files project should be terminated, why his skills were better put to use elsewhere, catching killers with more earthly origins. He'd receive accolades. He'd move on, move up. 

There was an odd sideways wrench behind his ribs, a feeling that made him want to drop the phone on the ground (was Wilkes still talking? He was) and fling himself at John, apologize, thank him profusely for the coffee (and the coffee itself was an apology, wasn't it, John felt badly for ignoring his calls and electing to go on his date, and why, _why_ would he feel badly enough about that to apologize? Not that he shouldn't feel badly. He should feel terrible. He'd abandoned Sherlock, making him spend hours in agonizing boredom staking out Soo Lin's apartment on his own. He'd demonstrated clear preference for someone else's company. He'd—)

"I want this resolved immediately," Wilkes said. "Are you understanding me?" 

"We're on our way," Sherlock said, voice clipped, composed. He hung up the phone. 

John looked at him. Waited.

"Andy Galbraith," he said. "The police are there now. I told Wilkes we'd come right down." 

John pursed his lips, nodded. 

Sherlock went out into the hallway without looking back, taking long strides. After a moment, he heard footsteps behind him. 

It was an unpleasant realization, but he suspected that the feeling of something loosening in his chest at the sound might have been relief.

*

One of Sebastian Wilkes's glass-paneled walls had been shattered. He sat at his desk, looking oddly exposed, toying with his tie. 

Soo Lin stood near his office door, holding a cup of coffee in shaking hands. She had ink on the sides of her fingers, as though she'd been startled while replacing the toner in the copy machine. It left smeary dark trails on her white Styrofoam cup. 

A pair of tellers, wide-eyed, nervous, clearly new, were hovering nervously behind the counter. No doubt questioning their career choices. 

Sherlock ignored Wilkes entirely, strode straight back behind the counter towards the tellers. 

"Which one was his station?" he demanded.

One of the tellers pointed. She was wearing a name tag, but he didn't bother to note it. Irrelevant.

He snapped on a latex glove, tapped at the keyboard, and Galbraith's cash drawer popped open. He took a handful of bills, dropped them into an evidence bag which he then slipped into his pocket. 

"Ah," John said behind him, very close. "Did you just rob a bank?" 

Sherlock's lip quirked in spite of his best efforts. He was very happy not to be facing John. "Just taking it for testing." 

"I spoke with Soo Lin," John said, and at that Sherlock did turn around, face composed to his satisfaction. "She said that Galbraith revealed some kind of—romantic fixation on her. Started shouting about how he needed to protect her from men like Wilkes. He used a fire extinguisher to break the glass." 

"Interesting," Sherlock said, although it was anything but. 

"He's in police custody now, at the hospital. Soo Lin hasn't decided whether or not she's planning on pressing charges for assault. He grabbed her arm, tried to drag her out of the building." 

"Mm," Sherlock said. 

"We can head over there now, if you're done here," John said. 

Sherlock blinked, looked up. "Head where?" 

"To—to the hospital? To talk to Galbraith?" 

"There is nothing we can possibly learn from him." 

"But—" 

"He's almost certainly hallucinating. Oh, he'll tell us plenty, I'm sure, all of it absolutely meaningless. Come on." 

They were in the car and well on their way before John seemed to notice that something was amiss. 

"We're—we're not heading back towards headquarters," he said, frowning out the window.

"That's because we're not going to headquarters," Sherlock said. "Well. Not _our_ headquarters." 

*

It was, admittedly, not the most impressive of locations. 

But the _Irregular News_ was a small publication, very small, with a readership of only a few hundred, and it was amazing they managed to scrape up enough money to print the damn thing, let alone pay rent on an office location (regardless of how uninspiring the surroundings.) 

The entrance was in a back alley, right next to an overfilled dumpster. The door was steel, reinforced (they had never skimped on security, the Irregulars), and a tiny camera kept a watchful eye over the entranceway. 

Sherlock beamed up at the lens, a toothsome smile that often alarmed more than it comforted. He realized as the lock buzzed that John was still hanging back. 

"Come on," he said, holding the door. 

"What--?" John glanced around, wrinkling his nose up. It was not endearing in any way. Absolutely not. "What is this place?" 

"No time to explain. Hurry up. They get testy if I hold the door open for too long." 

Shaking his head (exasperated? fond? why fond?), John followed him through the door and down a narrow, dark hallway. They pushed through a second door into a small, chaotically messy workspace.

"You had the door open for fifteen seconds," a voice came from somewhere under a cluttered desk. A moment later, Wiggins popped his head up from where he'd been crouched on the floor, blinking. "We've asked you not to do that." He narrowed his eyes a little bit, looked John up and down. "Who's he? This your skeptical new partner?" 

Behind him, Anderson and Raz approached, looking for all the world like skittish, curious animals. 

"John Watson," Sherlock said, gesturing towards John with a sweep of his arm. 

"Ah, the enigmatic Dr. Watson," Wiggins nodded, went back to whatever he'd been doing. "Sherlock's mentioned you." 

"He—hasn't mentioned you," John said, clearly at a bit of a loss. He looked around, blinked. Looked around again. 

"Why would he?" Anderson, who generally looked the most respectable of the lot, with a beard he kept (mostly) tamed and the neat suits he favored (unlike Raz's usual uniform of ratty jeans-and-obscure-punk-band-t-shirts or Wiggins'—whatever the hell it was that Wiggins was wearing.) "Our work is highly sensitive. We prefer to remain behind the scenes."

"Though a little appreciation wouldn’t go amiss," Raz said. 

Sherlock scowled, stiffened his shoulders. "I appreciate your work." 

"And we appreciate yours," Wiggins said. "That's what we call a mutually beneficial relationship." 

"This isn't a social call," Anderson said, prowling closer. "You're here about the bank." 

"Enigmatic?" John asked, frowning.

Sherlock glanced at him. "Pay attention." 

"Tell him what we're working on!" Wiggins said, his voice muffled from under the desk. 

"Oh," Raz said. "The CIA is conspiring with the Russians. Did you know that?" 

"Um," John said. 

"You don't believe it?" Wiggins stuck his head up over the desk again, rolled his eyes. "You don't believe that the CIA, threatened by a loss of power and funding, wouldn't _dream_ of having a real enemy to prop up?" 

"I think you give the government too much credit," John said, after a long pause. "Do you have any idea how difficult it is to—" 

"We've been speaking with someone on the inside," Anderson said, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial tone. "Someone who's been privy to some very interesting conversations." 

"—look, the government can't even control the deficit or manage crime or respond properly to natural disasters," John said, shaking his head. "What makes you think they could possibly plan and execute an elaborate conspiracy?" 

"Not the politicians," Raz said, shaking his head. "They're just puppets, man. Just a bunch of idiots, Sherlock would agree—" 

Sherlock nodded. 

"What we're talking about goes deeper. It's a dark network. A government within a government. Controlling our every move." 

"The man behind the curtain," Wiggins added. 

"There's someone pulling the strings on everything. Every time you watch the news, every seemingly random event—who's to say it's really random? Everything serves an agenda," Anderson added. "Right down to which team wins the Super Bowl—"

John shot Sherlock an incredulous look. He folded his arms across his chest, seemingly caught between annoyance and indulgent amusement. "And exactly how—" 

"Another time," Sherlock said, because although he was enjoying watching and cataloguing John's reactions, there was a _case to solve_ , and he'd do well to remember that. It was more than a little alarming he'd let himself slip even this much. 

"Right," Wiggins said, clearing his throat. "You'd wanted information on Dr. Yao." 

"You shared information with these people?" John asked, his voice hushed, charmingly, naively shocked. 

Sherlock looked at him, could not settle on a proper response. He smiled. Caught himself, dragged the expression right back off of his face. Cleared his throat. Thought about winking. Mercifully held back. 

"Freaky stuff," Raz said. "You were right. He's the top doc over at Baskerville. We couldn't get much on him—when I say confidential I'm talking highest level clearance. Address, history, records—almost everything that's out there are dummy accounts. Diversions. He's involved in bioweapon research, and—get this. Working hand-in-hand with Moriarty Pharmaceuticals." 

"They took a lucrative contract with the US government last year," Anderson said. 

"We're talking billions," Raz nodded.

"Dig a little deeper, and things start to get scary," Wiggins said.

John smiled, glanced over at Sherlock. "Start to?" 

Wiggins ignored him. "Their CEO, James Moriarty? He's a ghost." 

"No one can find anything on him. It's as if he appeared out of nowhere," Raz shook his head. "No one even has a photograph of the guy. He conducts board meetings via satellite uplink, with his face and voice masked." 

"And he has his fingers in everything," Anderson said. "Every pie you can imagine. Even some you can't. Bioweapons are just the beginning." 

"And the US military just handed him the keys to the kingdom," Wiggins said. 

"The bioweapons," Sherlock said. "That's the—pie?—that I'm interested in right now. What exactly is it that Dr. Yao is working on?" 

"We couldn't get much," Anderson hedged.

"You should appreciate us more, Sherlock," Raz said. "Getting what we could wasn't easy." 

"Consider yourself duly appreciated." 

Raz glanced at Wiggins. He shrugged. 

"Rumor is that Moriarty is developing a compound they're calling H.O.U.N.D. The government's interested. Very interested." 

"Interested enough to buy him out," Raz said.

"Or buy him in," Anderson said. 

Sherlock breathed out, frustrated. "And what, exactly, is H.O.U.N.D.?" 

"It's a deliriant. Induces an extreme fear reaction. Hallucinations. Renders users highly suggestible. Ultimate goal is to develop it for use as an anti-personnel weapon." 

Sherlock straightened up, looked sharply at John. "That's what she's using. At the bank." 

John rubbed the bridge of his nose. "So you think that Soo Lin just called her brother up one day and said 'oh, hey, so my boss is a bit of a dick, mind if I borrow some of your top-secret research drug that I shouldn't even know about to screw with him a bit?' and he was just like 'oh, sure, sis, of course, I'll bring you some next time we meet for lunch'?" 

Sherlock tilted his head. "There is a precedent for this sort of thing. Wouldn't be the first time our government tested an unstable compound on unwitting subjects." 

"Agent Orange," Anderson said gravely. 

"I need you boys to test this," Sherlock said, drawing the evidence bag out of his pocket. 

"Sherlock," John said. "Agent Hooper at the lab can—" 

"Agent Hooper at the lab doesn't have the expertise I'm looking for right now," Sherlock said. 

"And these guys do?" 

"In this particular instance, yes." 

Raz gaped at the baggie. "You think it's—?" 

"The tellers handle the bills in their drawers all day," Sherlock said. "Think about it. Think about how many times you touch your face, your eyes, your mouth. The average person touches their face between two and three thousand times a day. The tellers don't wash their hands between each transaction. It's an effective delivery system. Almost guaranteed." 

"But wouldn't you dose the customers too?" 

"Maybe they have. Or maybe the effects are cumulative. We have no way of knowing right now, not unless someone comes forward to connect an odd experience with a recent trip to that particular Shad Sanderson branch." 

"Impressive," Anderson said. Then he shook himself, looking appropriately chagrined. "Impressively heinous, I mean. We'll run some tests." 

"He's probably right," Wiggins said, his voice flat. "He usually is." 

Sherlock was never precisely certain how to respond when they got like this. He settled on brusque, which came easiest. "How long will preliminary tests take?" 

"Pull up a stool," Anderson said, clearing a space on a cluttered counter. He had already donned a pair of latex gloves, was snapping a mask over his nose and mouth. He waved one gloved hand towards a microscope. 

Sherlock glanced over his shoulder at John. "You might want to grab a chair. This is going to be a while." 

*

 **BIGFOOT RUNNING FOR CONGRESS!** the front page of the most current issue of _The Irregular News_ proclaimed. There was a blurry photograph of the legendary creature in question underneath the headline. Someone had photoshopped a little briefcase into one outstretched furry hand. 

John sighed, leaned back in his chair. There was a crick in his neck and he stretched, rolling his shoulders. 

He set the paper aside, glanced over to where Sherlock and Anderson were huddled over a microscope, seemingly engaged in a battle of wills over whose turn it was to peer through the lens. Next to them, Raz was staring intently at a computer screen, scrolling through pages and pages of what looked to be chemical equations. Wiggins was carefully dripping liquid from a pipette onto a dollar bill, frowning and making notes on a clipboard with each drop. 

The tableau was surreal, bizarre—who _were_ these guys? Why did Sherlock, who was certainly brilliant, seem to hold their paranoid, eclectic expertise in higher regard than the techs at the Bureau labs? 

His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he glanced down. Jeanette. Christ, he'd told her he'd call her today. He had no idea what time it was. 

_Still busy with that case?_

He sighed. They'd parted amicably if a bit awkwardly the previous night, his attention half on Sherlock. He'd been irritated with him, and then, later, had felt badly for snapping at him. 

"Whoa," Raz said. 

John slipped his phone back into his pocket without replying, stood up. "What did you find?" 

"I've never seen anything like this before," Raz said. 

"It's on the money? The—what was it—H.O.U.N.D.?"

"There's dirty money, and then there's _dirty_ money," Anderson said. "This is absolutely filthy." 

“You said that one of the tellers was handling money tainted with this stuff all day?” Wiggins shook his head, breathed out. “They’re lucky all he did was yell and break some glass.” 

John’s phone buzzed in his pocket again. He saw Sherlock’s eyes cut towards him. 

"At absolute best, this would cause extremely vivid hallucinations, coupled with heightened suggestibility."

"It’s like LSD’s psychotic younger cousin. Dose someone with enough of this and you could make them live out their worst nightmares," Wiggins said. 

"Imagine a coordinated military attack, combined with subliminal messages—print, television, radio, you name it—you could have entire cities tearing themselves apart from within. People would be killing each other with no actual idea of what they were doing. Or why." Anderson's voice had gone breathy with horror. 

"And the military is testing this, secretly, on civilians," Sherlock said. There was an eagerness to his voice that John didn’t like. 

"You don’t know that," John said. "If Dr. Yao is providing his sister with this drug, you don’t know that it’s anything more than the actions of one man. To say that this is a government-sanctioned test—"

"Whether it’s one army doctor or the entire army top brass calling the shots is irrelevant right now," Sherlock said. "The important thing is that it's happening." 

John’s phone buzzed again. He ignored it.

"I'd say it’s pretty damn relevant, especially once this goes public—"

"Public!" Raz laughed. "Oh boy, you really have no idea how these people operate, do you?"

Bristling, John whirled to face him. "I think I have a clearer idea of military infrastructure and chain of command than you." 

"You followed orders," Sherlock said. "You didn’t give them."

"Now wait just a second—"

"I need to talk to someone," Sherlock said abruptly, clearly losing patience with the direction the conversation had taken. "Call me if you find anything additional." 

He breezed out through the back door. Startled, John hurried after him. 

"No," Sherlock said, when John started to climb into the passenger seat. "I'm not going back to headquarters. You should call a cab." 

"Where are you going?" John asked, gobsmacked.

"I need to speak with someone, and I need to do it alone," Sherlock said. "And it's already getting late. Don't you—have a date, or something, that you need to get to?" 

He slammed the door, drove away, left John standing, slack-jawed in the alley. 

"You son of a—" he bit off his own words, fighting the urge to aim a well-placed kick at the foul smelling dumpster. 

He slipped his phone from his pocket, winced at the succession of missed text messages from Jeanette. 

He threw his head back for a moment, looking up at the sky. The sun was heavy, low and golden, beginning to sink. 

*

The parking garage under the Watergate Hotel was quiet, eerie. Sherlock's footsteps echoed as he moved through the dappled darkness, his coat collar up. He paused by one of the concrete support beams, leaned his shoulder against the cool surface.

"When I mentioned Watergate, I didn't think you'd take it quite so literally," The Housekeeper’s soft voice drifted from the shadows.

He turned, watched carefully as she stepped towards him, seeming to melt out of the darkness. She was dressed smartly, a purple dress that hit just below the knee, sensible shoes, a fitted trench coat. Her lined face was as kind and unassuming as he recalled from the bathroom at Shad Sanderson. 

"Occasionally the most obvious choice is the one that's most often overlooked," he said. "We need to talk." 

"I did warn you to stay away from this case," she reminded him, her voice gently scolding, a mother chiding a rebellious child on the playground.

"You know something." 

"I know a lot of things," she agreed mildly. 

"Yao," he said, frustrated. "Yao is testing his compound on civilians."

"Yes, and you'll never be able to touch him for it. Walk away."

"Innocent people are being hurt."

She raised her brows, studied him carefully. "Is that truly what you care about? Interesting. I had been led to believe otherwise."

"I—care," he said, hesitant, almost choking on the words. He did care, in a way. But his cares were less focused on individuals like poor, pathetic Galbraith and much more focused on higher ideals like truth and justice. He frowned. "I can't walk away."

"It doesn't matter what you do," she said. "Interfere. Or not. This will all resolve itself. You aren't needed, Agent Holmes."

"What the hell does that mean?"

She smiled at him. "There are wars being fought on so many different fronts. More is at stake than you could possibly understand. Take care not to get yourself killed over the wrong one." 

"What—?"

She smiled again, the expression vague, making her look like nothing more than a harmless, sweet old lady. She walked off through the darkness at a brisk clip, her low heels clicking on the concrete.

*

John's apartment, depressing on the best of days, felt downright claustrophobic at the moment. 

He paced back and forth in front of the television, clenching his fist. 

"I'm allowed to have a life," he said to the Sherlock in his head. "You're married to your work, and that's fine. I don't have to marry it too."

He shook his head, forced his hands to unclench.

"It's not that I'm not dedicated," he added. "I am. I don't—if it takes working late nights to get this thing solved, this or anything else, of course I'll—of course."

He had tried to apologize with coffee that morning. Sherlock seemed to have been taking it well, and then he’d gone and—well. He just kept making it worse. And Sherlock had clearly cut him out because he couldn't so much as bear to be in the same room as him anymore. 

He had to know that John wasn't necessarily going to leap on board with his Military-Is-The-Root-Of-All-Evil ideology. He had to know that John was still, at heart, very much a soldier. 

It was in his blood. His grandfather, his father—they had served. Proudly. And so had he.

And yeah, perhaps John had gone a little overboard with his knee-jerk reactions. Whether or not his actions were officially sanctioned, Yao was clearly doing harm, or, at the very least, willing to look the other way while someone used his work to do harm. 

John sighed, sat down on his uncomfortable little couch. He looked down at his phone, at Jeanette's hopeful little sequence of texts. 

_Hi_ , he typed back. _You're wonderful, and lovely, and I’m obviously going to regret this, but I don’t think my job leaves me with much time for dating these days._

"Shit," he muttered. That text sent, he directed the next to Sherlock.

 _Where are you?_

Sherlock's reply was instantaneous. 

_Working. SH_

_Can I help? Let me help._

Sherlock never replied. Half an hour later, John tried calling him. The line went directly to voicemail.

*

Sherlock, uncomfortable, rolled his neck, stretched his arms. He'd been crouched on a bed of dried pine needles, leaning against rough treebark, for the better part of an hour. 

This case necessitated far too many stakeouts. 

As far as he was concerned, one stakeout was too many. Two was bordering on inhumane.

The boredom was _crushing._

He'd gone straight from the parking garage to the airport, bought a ticket for the first flight out to Dayton, Ohio. There, he'd rented a car for the roughly hour and a half drive across state lines to Liberty, Indiana. 

The Baskerville base was hidden away, accessible by unmarked roads. He'd driven as far as he dared, left his car pulled off into the trees at a bend in the gravel drive, and continued on foot. After a mile or so, he'd found a decent spot with a good view of the perimeter fence and guard station, with plenty of foliage and ground cover to prevent him from being spotted. 

He'd had some luck, in the past, sneaking into restricted areas. Most people were stupid, and astonishingly unobservant, and he was often able to utilize a combination of distraction and audacity to take advantage of their natural weaknesses. 

He'd gotten out his binoculars, fiddled with them until the base and its varied goings-on were in focus. He'd watched the perimeter checks, studied the guards at the front gate, their motions, their behavior towards arrivals and departures. 

Security was tight. He'd expected as much, from what he'd heard. 

Still, dismantling it would prove to be something of a diverting challenge. 

Unfortunately, he had not yet identified an approach that would yield the desired results. He ran varied scenarios in his head, found that each carried an unacceptably high percentage of risk that he'd be captured, arrested. 

So he waited. And watched. And waited some more. Eventually, an opening would present itself. Likely later on into the wee hours of the morning, when the skeleton crew on staff had been lulled by silence, by inaction. 

Until then, waiting.

It was hateful. 

He wondered, briefly, if this might not be more bearable with John. John had texted, a while back, clearly looking to be invited along. Sherlock had already been at the airport by then. A far cry from the previous night, where John had cruelly and heartlessly abandoned him to his work. 

Right. 

Well, he admittedly enjoyed John’s company. For the most part. But John was also irritated with him, and an irritated John was a _distracting_ John. Sherlock found himself allocating far too much of his mental processing power towards attempting to understand the cause of John’s pique. 

Better to do this alone. He'd been alone for years. He'd be alone again when John finally turned in his last field report and disappeared from his life, bound for brighter horizons. 

None of that changed the fact that Sherlock was very, very bored. And in desperate need of diversion. 

Just as he was contemplating clambering down the embankment and having a go at the fence with a pair of wire clippers (surely they wouldn't expect such a direct, brazen attack), his drifting senses snapped to attention at the crack of a branch behind him. 

It was a furtive sound. Not followed by the crashing and bumbling that would signify an animal passing through. No, this was a noise made accidentally by someone who'd been trying to be _quiet._

He turned, too late, too late, and found the muzzle of a rather long rifle pressed against his cheek. A soldier, square-shouldered in his fatigues, looking down at him impassively. 

"Ah," Sherlock said, and smiled. "Glad you're here. I seem to have gotten lost. Would you be able to help—" 

The soldier brought the butt of his gun down against his forehead, a sharp jabbing motion, and Sherlock's world went dark. 

*

Unless he was actively investigating a lead, Sherlock was always at the office.

John had a sneaking suspicion that he _lived_ at the office. Regardless of how early he arrived, Sherlock had always beaten him there, sitting behind his desk, looking as if he'd been there for hours. 

But this time, he'd come around the corner holding two cups of coffee, determined to sort out whatever had been going wrong with their fledgling partnership, and had found himself faced with an empty desk. 

It was worrying. 

He waited a bit, then sent off a text, and, when no response was forthcoming, tried calling. It went straight to voicemail. 

_Working_ , Sherlock had said in his one, curt response the night before. 

John dialed Wilkes at the bank. 

"Has Agent Holmes been by this morning?" he asked, keeping the worry from edging into his voice. 

"Should he have?" Wilkes asked. "Has he made any progress? This is really getting ridiculous—" 

"We'll be in touch, thanks," John said, hanging up quickly. He fidgeted where he stood, fingers tapping on the desk. The two cups of coffee had grown cool. 

He dialed the number for the _Irregular News._

"State your purpose," Wiggins said, his voice flat. 

John rolled his eyes, took a steadying breath. "It's John Watson. Agent Watson. Sherlock's partner—"

"Oh," Wiggins said. "Lost him, have you? He does that." 

He let out a relieved gust of air. "Is he there, then?"

"No, haven't seen him since yesterday."

The beginnings of a headache were there, creeping on the edges of his vision. "So when you say he _does that—_?"

"Disappears. Goes off the grid." 

"Does a little funky poaching," a crackle as Raz joined the line. 

"Funky—?"

"Poaching. B&E, you know what I'm saying? He likes to sneak into places where he has no business being. We tell him it's not always worth the risk, but the man wants his answers." 

"Baskerville," John said.

"Probably," Wiggins agreed. Then he sobered. "Oh. That's not good. He's probably dead. Let me know if he is, will you? I'm supposed to get all of his stuff when that happens." 

"Not really helpful," John said, and hung up. He stood for a moment looking up at the poster on Sherlock's wall, the UFO and the white text proclaiming _I Want to Believe._ His gaze dropped to the messy desk, to the framed photo, two smiling little boys. One of them so clearly Sherlock, with his shock of dark hair and vivid eyes. Their grins were genuine, innocent, unfettered. 

It was hard to imagine Sherlock, as he must have been, then.

John grabbed his coat and ran for the door. 

*

He dialed as he drove. The call was answered almost immediately.

"John." There was surprise in the voice. He'd known who was calling. He'd kept the number. 

John swallowed, pursed his lips, tightened his grip on the phone. "Erm, hello. It's been a long time." 

Silence. Weighty, heavy silence. Fraught with the kind of meaning he didn't have time to analyze. 

"Look," John said. "I know you didn't want to talk. After. And I understand that. But—" 

_After_ was something of a loaded topic. Before, there had been something between them. 

But _after_ was a burned, bandaged face and hardened eyes in a hospital bed. _After_ was stony silence where there had once been warm camaraderie. _After_ was an abrupt dismissal and a 'please don't call me.' And then, not very long after that, John had taken a bullet and found himself in his own hospital bed, with his own silence and his own troubled thoughts. 

He thought that maybe, he and Major James Sholto had a lot to apologize to each other for. 

He also knew that he didn't have time. Not now. 

"I know you wouldn't have called if it wasn't important," James said. His voice was steady. Calm. "What is it?" 

"I need an in. At Baskerville." 

Silence. Painful, loud silence.

A muffled laugh, surprised, fond. "Well, you never did do anything halfway." 

John smiled in spite of himself, one hand pressing the phone against his ear, one hand on the wheel, weaving through traffic towards the airport. 

"A friend of mine has gotten himself mixed up in something. I think he—I think he might be there."

In fact, he was almost certain of it. He'd confirmed through the Bureau that Sherlock had purchased a plane ticket to Dayton, Ohio the night before, that he'd put a car rental through on his credit card. He hadn't taken a motel. 

"Have you ever been there, John?" 

He laughed, unamused. "No. Can't say I've had the pleasure." 

"They're not particularly welcoming," James said.

"Look," John said. "I understand if you can't call in enough favors to get me a—a damn visitor's badge or something. But I need—I need an in. Something. An address, even." 

"Whose address?" So steady, calm, that voice. The voice of a man with a core of steel. The voice of a leader. 

"A doctor. Military bioweapons research. Name's Yao." 

"Yao," James repeated. The scratch of a pen, writing it out. "All right, I'll see what I can do. Where are you now?" 

"About five minutes from the airport. I'm boarding a plane to Ohio—should be there within two hours. It's another hour and half to Liberty from there." 

"I'll call you back when you're on the ground."

"Right," John said, and then paused. "Thank you. I—this is—" 

"Don't thank me until you have something to thank me for," James said. 

"Yes," John said, and the smile that worked its way onto his face was unconscious, nostalgic. "Yes sir." 

He disconnected the call. 

*

He spent the flight second-guessing himself, nerves frayed, knee bouncing erratically as he counted the minutes until they landed. 

He hadn't spoken with James for years. He'd assumed they'd never speak again. And then he'd just—he'd just called up out of the blue asking for a favor. Without thinking about it. Without even hesitating. Because Sherlock needed him. 

As soon as he was on the ground, he turned his phone back on, checking anxiously for some communication from Sherlock. 

Nothing. 

His nerves coalesced into a dark pit of dread in his stomach. 

He rented a car, was halfway to Liberty, Indiana when his phone rang. He fumbled for it with one hand. 

"Watson," he said. 

"John," James said. "I couldn't get you in. I tried. But I did get you an address on Yao. It took some doing; the folks over at Baskerville like to pretend he doesn't exist." 

"Thank you," John said. The rush of gratitude was so strong he was nearly overcome. 

"Be careful," James said. "I know we—well. Things might not have ended quite the way I would have—" he took a measured, steadying breath. "Whatever your friend's got himself mixed up in, it's serious. Stay alert." 

"I will," John said. "I will." 

*

He knocked on the door of a small, nondescript house. It was well-manicured, shaded by elm trees, utterly devoid of personality. The kind of house one could pass and forget ever having seen. 

The sun had crept high overhead. Almost noon. It felt like it should be later in the day. He'd been on the go since before dawn. 

There was a car in the driveway, a dark SUV, nondescript. Government plates. 

He'd been prepared to wait, knowing that Yao was most likely on base at Baskerville and wouldn't be returning home until later in the day. The sight of the car had surprised him. 

But, then again, Sherlock might have given Yao and his team enough trouble to last much of the night. His entire schedule might be thrown off. 

God, he hoped so. He hadn't much cared for the idea of leaving Sherlock in their clutches any longer than necessary.

The door cracked open. 

Yao, bleary eyed, unshaven. 

"Good morning," John said, plastering a cheery smile on his face. He lifted his service revolver, nudged his way in through the door. "You look like you had a late night." 

He ignored the rather insistent, horrified voice inside his head that demanded to know what the hell he was doing. 

"What is the meaning of this?" Yao asked, finding himself backed into the dim, bland living room of his home. John kicked the door shut behind him, still holding his gun. 

"Long night at the office?" John asked. 

Yao seemed to find himself, to draw himself up into some semblance of military bearing. 

"I am going to have to insist that you—"

"FBI," John said, flashing his badge with the hand that wasn't holding his gun. "We're going to have ourselves a nice chat about what, exactly, you've done with my partner, and then we're going to talk about you letting him go. And after that, you're going to make whatever calls you need to make that happen." 

*

They idled at the entrance, watching the silent guard tower, the unmoving metal gate. 

Sweat beaded at the edge of John's hairline, trickling down his neck and disappearing under his shirt collar. 

His hand, training his weapon on Yao, remained perfectly steady. 

The gate did not move. There was still no discernible activity behind it. 

"This kind of lawlessness is something that has been attributed to your partner," Yao said, staring straight ahead. "It is surprising, coming from you. A military man." 

"You think I'm the type of person who could sit back and watch as innocent civilians are experimented on?" 

"I think you are a patriot. The type of person who understands that hard decisions must sometimes be made, that sacrifices are often necessary for the greater good." 

"Doing a lot of good, then, with this drug? Helping a lot of people?" 

Yao laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. "You uncover one small piece of information and think you know the whole story." He shifted in his seat, gave John a steady look. "You could be court martialed just for knowing that little bit about my work. I could wave my hand and you could disappear behind those gates and never be seen or heard from again." 

"Then why haven't you?" John smiled without humor. Back in Afghanistan, the men he served with had known that smile, had come to recognize its dangerous edges. "Don't tell me it's just because I have a gun on you." 

"Perhaps we are just biding time until the sniper can get into place." 

John went on smiling. His hand did not waver at all. "Or perhaps someone behind that gate, someone higher up than you, doesn't like the fact that you've been spraying your top-secret experimental compound all over a busy bank branch." 

Yao's phone began to ring. 

They looked at it, where it perched on the dashboard, lit up. 

"Slowly," John said. "Put it on speaker." 

Yao leaned forward and picked up the phone.

"Yes?" he said. 

"Sir," the voice on the other end was brisk, authoritative. "We are ready to initiate the exchange." 

Yao's face betrayed a brief flicker of surprise. John noted it, tightened his grip on the gun. 

"Is that so?" Yao asked. 

"Yes sir," the voice answered. "He authorized it." 

"Oh," Yao said. There was something odd in his voice. "Oh." Then he squared his shoulders, looked back through the window towards the gate.

"Stand by," the voice said. The line went dead. 

"Who's 'he'?" John asked, keeping his voice mild. 

"I think you've been privy to enough information for one day," Yao said, his voice distracted. 

The gate clanked as it began to slide open. 

"Out of the car," John said. "Slowly." 

As Yao climbed out of the passenger seat, John slid out of his side, keeping his gun trained over the hood of the car. 

Sherlock was on the other side of the gate, escorted on either side by uniformed soldiers. His normally pristine appearance was rumpled, his shirt untucked and partially torn. His eyes were wide, unblinking, glassy, mouth slack. 

"Get in the car," John said. "Sherlock." 

At the sound of his name, Sherlock startled, took a few stumbling steps forward. As he passed through the gate, John nodded to Yao, who straightened his jacket and stepped away from the car. 

"You've got his attention now," Yao said to Sherlock as he passed him. "I wouldn't feel too comfortable about that." 

Sherlock stared at him, bewildered, uncomprehending.

"Sherlock," John said again.

Sherlock turned away from Yao, continued his stumbling pace towards John. As Yao passed through the entrance, the gate began to slide closed. When it had clicked shut, John breathed out, lowered his gun. 

Sherlock stood very close, shoulder brushing against John's. 

"Are you all right?" John asked.

He could see Sherlock struggling to piece himself together. After a moment, he nodded. "How did I get here?" 

John put his hand on Sherlock's shoulder, squeezed. "Get in the car. Let's go." 

*

Sherlock was shaking. 

John glanced over at him, then glanced in the rearview mirror to make sure that they weren't being followed. He accelerated. 

His heart was still pounding. He expected a roadblock around every corner. 

_There was no reasonable reason for this to have worked._

"Sherlock?" John tightened his grip on the steering wheel, frowned. "Are you—"

Sherlock had clenched his fist, was pressing it against his mouth. His eyes were fixed straight ahead. 

"Right," John said. "Right. We have to get you to a hospital."

"NO!" Sherlock jolted in his seat like he'd been electrocuted. He turned to face John, his eyes wide, horrified. John watched as he visibly steeled himself, attempted to wrangle himself under control. "It's the drug. It's—it triggers a fear reaction. It's—" He shut his eyes briefly, shuddered, opened them again. "Quite intense. But the effect is dissipating." 

"They exposed you to H.O.U.N.D.?"

"That or something similar," Sherlock said. His left hand, the one not pressed against his mouth, had migrated to his knee, knuckles whitening as he squeezed. 

"Did they hurt you?"

Sherlock looked at him. 

"Other than exposing you to the drug. Do you have any injuries?"

He dutifully flexed his arms, shifted in his seat. "I don't think so. I don't remember." 

"What do you remember?"

"Too much." 

"That doesn't make any sense." 

Sherlock shut his eyes, made a frustrated groaning sound. "The things I remember aren't the things that actually happened, John. It's the drug. It was quite vivid." He scrubbed at his hair with his fingers, leaned his head back against the seat rest. "I attempt to school myself against emotion, you know. It's a hindrance to my work. The grit in the lens. The fly in the ointment. This is abhorrent. I'm _afraid_ , John. I know what my eyes are telling me and I know what my mind is telling me and they _do not connect,_ do you understand? Do you have any idea what that's like?"

John glanced into the rear view mirror again. Nothing but empty road behind them. They were less than a mile from the highway. 

He looked back at Sherlock. 

"I don't know what your mind is telling you right now," he said quietly. "Or your eyes. But you are in a car, with me, John Watson, and you're safe. We're getting the hell out of here, and I am going to drive us to the airport, and then when we land I am going to take you to wherever it is that you need to go. All right?" 

Sherlock shut his eyes, nodded. He swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down. He opened his eyes again, looked at John. "We need to go to the bank." 

John barked out a laugh, shook his head. The adrenaline spike he'd been riding was beginning to recede, leaving him trembling, slightly giddy. "Now how did I know you were going to say that?" 

*

It was late in the day, near closing, by the time they'd landed back in D.C. and navigated through afternoon traffic to Shad Sanderson. 

"You've got it solved, then?" John asked, a little smile working at the corners of his mouth. 

Sherlock looked over at him, nodded. He'd come back to himself somewhat on the drive to the airport, even more so on the plane. The world around him—the sights, sounds, smells—had slowly settled back down into something familiar. Something bearable. 

He, quite determinedly, locked his experience at Baskerville away for further examination later. No sense burdening himself with it now. 

John had, clearly, been waiting for him to explain. But the doctor in him, the one that appeared to be extremely concerned for Sherlock's well-being, had kept him from pushing too hard for details. Instead, he'd sat in the aisle seat, knees knocking against his own, casting furtive little looks at Sherlock out of the corner of his eye. 

"Might as well call it in," Sherlock said. "Let Lestrade know to send a team. Counterfeiting." 

John raised his brows. "Counterfeiting?" 

Sherlock smiled. On a better day, a day when it hadn't felt as though his mind had been pulled apart and stretched like taffy, he would have enjoyed dragging out the suspense. Now, he just wanted to go home. 

"Soo Lin Yao hates her boss," he said. 

John barked out a little laugh, tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. "Can't fault her for that." 

It warmed him, that laugh. John's instant dislike and dismissal of Wilkes. He still could not quite say why. 

"Yes, well, this wasn't just a matter of humiliating him out of his Branch of the Year bonus money," Sherlock said. "Soo Lin and her brother each saw an opportunity—something mutually beneficial. He had a chance to test his bioweapon on an unsuspecting populace, and she was able to rid herself of the last obstacle in her way." 

"Wilkes?" John asked, his voice confused. Not following. 

"No," Sherlock said. "The tellers." 

"I don't understand. They just hired new tellers." 

"Soo Lin has been slowly replacing the money in the vault with counterfeit bills." 

John looked away from the road, gaped at him. "She was what?"

"A little at a time. A well-constructed, very deliberate heist. She's had years, John, years to think on it. To plan. She's been very thorough, now that she's put it all into action." He paused. "Ink stains, on the sides of her hands. Gave her away. She was holding a coffee cup the day that Galbraith had his episode. The ink left stains on the Styrofoam." 

"She could have just put her hand in ink, Sherlock." 

"No," he said. "It wasn't just any ink. It was ink from a commercial printing press or copy machine, powdery, not wet. But it couldn't have been. The Shad Sanderson copier was out of order, don't you remember? From the—" 

"The intestines," John said, grimacing a little bit. "Yeah, all right. But the tellers?" 

"She needed them out of the way. New tellers wouldn't be familiar with procedures, routines. She wouldn't have to answer any questions. No one would suspect her of doing anything unusual." 

"So she just… poisoned her coworkers?" 

Sherlock shrugged, offered a tired smile. "Effective. And their resultant behavior had the inadvertent but happy consequence of ruining Wilkes's credibility. There wouldn't be a single person in Shad Sanderson corporate willing to back him when he's accused of the theft." 

John pulled into the lot by the bank, put the car in park, stared. "When _he's_ accused? I thought you just said it was Soo Lin." 

"Oh," Sherlock said, tickled in spite of himself. He loved this part. Even as tired and as drained as he was, he couldn't help but love it. "Access to the back offices and vaults are controlled by keycard access. I noticed Wilkes's card the first day we arrived at the bank. The edges had started to peel away." 

"Happens," John said. "With old badges. The glue—" 

"Yes," Sherlock cut in. "I thought so too, at the time. But then I noticed that Soo Lin's displayed similar fraying." 

"So she—"

"—switched the keycards," Sherlock finished, nodding. "Peeled the fronts with the identifying information, and then glued them back on. Her badge, her identifying information, his chip. He had no reason to suspect. And every time she used her badge, every time she went into the vault to make a switch, she was actually swiping Wilkes's card. She was setting him up. Creating a log in the system. Laying a trail of breadcrumbs that led straight back to him. Oh, _clever._ " 

"Maybe take it down a notch with the admiration," John said, but he was smiling. 

"I assume her brother provided her with a means of escape, once she'd finished. A nice tropical island retreat or some such. Pity she won't get a chance to use it." He perked up at the sight of police cruisers pulling into the lot behind them. "Ah. Perfect timing." 

*

Later, with Soo Lin in cuffs, police and FBI swarming all over Shad Sanderson like particularly dutiful ants, Sherlock was able to settle into the passenger seat of John's car with a tired sigh, rubbing at his head. The world was still overbright, the edges vivid and blurry. 

He hadn't shaved, and the stubble on his chin and neck was irritating, itchy. 

He looked over at John, who was frowning a little bit as he settled into the driver's seat. The sight of him was inexplicably soothing.

He could look for a while, he thought. He could look at John and not be bored.

"Sherlock," John said, curious, pensive. "Are you all right?"

He was feeling a bit lightheaded. He wondered how long he'd been staring. He blinked, his eyes dry and gritty. He blinked again. 

"Yes," he said, when he was certain he would be telling the truth. He breathed in, breathed out, took stock of himself. He was tired. A square meal and some sleep would do him a world of good. 

"All right," John said. He turned the key in the ignition, did not pull away. He went on looking at Sherlock.

Oh. Right. Still with the staring. 

He turned his head away, pointedly, looked out the window. Issued an overly theatrical yawn. 

That seemed to satisfy John. Although not enough to put the car into gear. 

"Well," John said, resting his hands on the wheel. He continued to study Sherlock. "Looks like the end of the troubles for your old friend Wilkes." 

"Oh, no," Sherlock said, smiling a little bit at his own cleverness. He was sluggish from the drug, yes, but not entirely useless. "I happened to notice several documents in his office suggesting that he was personally involved in predatory lending. People frown on that sort of thing, these days. I made sure to point it out to the SAC before we left. So I think, in fact, his troubles might be just beginning." 

John laughed. A genuine, deep laugh that seemed to burst out of him with little warning. He shook his head, his eyes warm. 

That laugh tugged at him. Sherlock chuckled, leaned his head back, shut his eyes. He did not bother to try and wrangle his smile into submission. 

*

Sherlock ran. 

His heart thumped steadily in his chest. His feet hit the ground with measured beats, perspiration sliding down his face, his neck, his back. 

He normally loathed exercise for the sake of exercise. But his job demanded a certain level of physical fitness, and since he couldn't simply _think_ himself into good shape, he had opted to take up running. 

It was morning, barely, the sun not much more than a blurry hint at the edge of the horizon. He was alone, the world around him silent and sleeping. 

His own sleep had been disjointed, punctuated by fractured half-memories, disturbing dreams. A parting gift from the H.O.U.N.D. as it left his system, no doubt.

He preferred running on a track, able at least to put his body on autopilot and ignore his surroundings, retreating deep into his own mind. He did this now, cautiously approaching his experience at Baskerville. 

His memories were fuzzy. 

This was troubling. He normally had no difficulty recalling events with perfect clarity. But the chemical influence had clearly affected his short-term memory and emotional state, leaving him suggestible, confused, _frightened._

He had been injected and locked in a dark room. He knew that much. 

He'd been alone in the room. That was a guess, but it seemed most likely, given the circumstances. Depending on the dosage and duration, the drug rendered the subjects unstable, occasionally violent. 

They had, almost certainly, observed him through closed circuit television cameras. 

So he'd been alone in the room. Regardless of what his eyes had told him. There had not been anyone else in the room with him. His brother had not been there. John had not been there. Other… things… had not been there. 

He had shouted himself hoarse. 

His throat had been sore, his voice strained. Something had frightened him so deeply that he'd screamed until his vocal cords had felt flayed raw. 

He could not recall what it was. Only that he'd been certain, absolutely certain, that _someone had been there._ He'd seen his brother. He'd seen John. The details were hazy. 

His brother had still been a child. 

He could try hypnosis. He'd tried before, had recovered certain buried memories of his childhood. But this—these memories weren't repressed. They weren't even memories at all. They were hallucinations, nothing more, just fragments of a temporarily shattered psyche. 

There were no truths to be gleaned from hallucinations. That way lay madness.

He was more troubled by his lack of ability to recall the _actual_ events of his brief incarceration. He'd been injected, he'd been locked in a room, he'd been _afraid._ Then there had been daylight, and there had been John. Actual, real John. Miraculous John. 

Even that memory was hazy, although he could put it together well enough, and he was certain that John would help him to fill in any details he might have missed. 

John had traveled all the way to Indiana. John had tracked down Yao and taken him hostage. John had pulled a gun on a military research doctor. John had negotiated for Sherlock's release. 

John had done this. John had done this for him. 

Why? 

John had saved his life on their first case. He'd not hesitated at all. He acted as if there was something worth preserving in Sherlock, something beyond the utility he provided to the Bureau. 

His intellect had often been viewed as something of value. The rest of him was, generally, viewed as a necessary evil, something that was to be tolerated, _put up with_ , in order to access his unique insights and abilities. 

John didn't seem to just _put up with him._ Or, at least, not all the time. He did inexplicable things like bring Sherlock coffee, and apologize when he felt he'd hurt Sherlock's feelings and—

—and shoot people to save Sherlock's life, and take hostages in order to save Sherlock from a terrible fate. A fate he'd stupidly blundered into. 

It was utterly perplexing. 

Sherlock was unaccustomed to feeling perplexed. He found he did not much care for it. 

And what of Yao? And the mysterious words that he'd spoken as he'd passed Sherlock at the gate? 

_You've got his attention now._

Whose? 

And why did that statement fill him with an oddly electric sensation of mingled dread and excitement? 

He stopped running and leaned over to brace himself on his knees, gasping in gulps of cold morning air. His shirt was soaked with sweat. The sun had climbed up from the horizon. He had lost track of time. 

He was no longer alone. 

The Housekeeper stood at the edge of the track, half-hidden by the bleachers, arms folded. Watching him. 

He swiped a forearm across his face, straightened up, walked towards her. She stood, unmoving, watched his approach. 

"You're lucky to be alive," she said. "You've seen things that weren't mean to be seen. I did warn you." 

He shook his head, frustrated. "I can't remember." 

"Mm," she agreed mildly. "Probably best that you don't." 

"Yao said something to me. He said that I had 'his' attention now. Who is he?" 

She pursed her lips together, gave him a look that seemed unsettlingly akin to pity. "I take it you haven't seen the news." 

"No," he said. "I've been here." 

"Dr. Yao was killed in a car accident late last night. Seems his car went off the road near his home, struck a tree head-on. Faulty brakes, they're saying. Very sad." 

Sherlock drew back, frowning. "That's—" 

She smiled, not a particularly happy smile. "As I said, Agent Holmes. You're lucky to be alive." 

"But—" 

"Yao had _his_ attention, too," she said. "You'd do well to keep that in mind." 

She turned without waiting for him to respond, began to pick her way carefully across the dew-damp grass. 

"Wait," Sherlock said. He was still breathing hard. The world still felt a bit too vivid, a bit unreal. He suspected that he might feel lingering effects from the drug for some time. 

She turned back, gave him another of those worryingly sad smiles. "Trust no one, Agent Holmes." 

Her words sent a shiver of unease up his spine.

When she had gone, he began to run again, his legs trembling with exertion. He was alone once more. The sun had begun to take the edge off of the chill morning air. 

He tried, and failed, to shake the feeling that he was being watched.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to drop by and say hi on [Tumblr](http://www.discordantwords.tumblr.com/)


	4. Mayfly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Fandom Trumps Hate charity auction recently concluded, and I was fortunate enough to be the winning bidder on the incredibly talented Khorazir, who has produced some absolutely gorgeous artwork for this story. See the link at the end of the chapter!

There was a certain hustle and bustle to the lunch crowd on weekdays in D.C., a steady stream of suited men and women, talking in serious tones over small plates. Waiters, moving with a practiced efficiency through the crowds, keeping the line moving, ensuring that no one lingered for too long. 

He didn't typically step out for lunch. He'd suggested it, once, to Sherlock, and the look he'd received in response appeared to indicate that it was the strangest thing Sherlock had ever heard in his life. That, on the same day they'd received a report from a man who claimed that he'd been chased and bitten by a six-foot-tall humanoid flukeworm in the bowels of the New Jersey sewer system. 

So, no, they didn't really go out for lunch. 

They'd gotten into an unspoken habit of grabbing takeout whenever one or the other was hungry, [eating over the desk in their dingy little basement office](https://khorazir.tumblr.com/post/157373310748/i-want-to-believe-and-hips-before-hands). 

He didn't mind. 

But Sally Donovan had called him up out of the blue, and he hadn't seen Sally since they'd graduated together from the academy at Quantico. He'd quite liked Sally, and had been pleased to hear from her. 

"This was a nice surprise," John said, and meant it. "It was good to hear from you. I haven't had much chance to catch up with anyone from our class lately." 

Sally poked at her pasta dish with her fork, smiled at him. She looked good. She'd always looked good. And she'd been smart as hell and clearly destined for good things when they were at the academy, and the latest word was that she'd begun to carve out a respectable name for herself in the Violent Crimes Section. 

Yeah, it was nice to hear from her. He wondered why he hadn't thought to call her up. Why had he not tried to pursue this earlier?

"Well," she said. "Lucky for me the Freak let you out of the basement." 

He winced, a little. Sherlock's nickname was deeply entrenched in Bureau lore, he himself had known it and used it in his academy days. 

It seemed different, now, sharing an office with the man behind the myth. 

"So tell me, seriously," Sally was still smiling, leaning forward conspiratorially. He had liked her sarcastic, sharp-edged humor, once. They'd shared plenty of inappropriate giggling fits back in the academy. "Have you had any close encounters of the third kind?"

"Oh Christ," John said, setting his fork down and taking a big gulp of water. "Is that what everyone thinks I do?" 

"No, of course not," she said, but there was a sympathetic twist to her expression.

He took another too-large swallow of water, cleared his throat. 

"But…?" he asked, because he could see in her face that she was holding something back.

She sighed. "But, well, you _do_ work with the Freak." 

"Right," he said, sighing. "Look, his ideas are—I'm the first to admit they're, ah, a little out there. But he's smart, Sally, he's absolutely brilliant." 

"Well, I've got a case that's a little out there," Sally said, huffing out an exasperated little laugh. "We were called in to assist the Baltimore PD with building a profile on a serial killer. It's—well, like I said. Out there."

"Go on," John said, raising his brows.

"Four murders so far, occurring roughly once a week. The victims vary in age, race, gender—they have no known connections to each other." 

John frowned. "You said serial killer, so there's obviously a pattern." 

She laughed again, a sharp unhappy sound. She'd been the only other person he'd ever known to make laughter sound angry, and he'd always liked that about her. 

"Each victim was found in a residence that didn't belong to them." 

"Okay…?"

"A residence belonging to someone recently deceased. Someone they had absolutely no known connection to. All in the Baltimore area, but the police can't even find a connection between the locations themselves other than the fact that they were all owned by someone who had recently passed away." 

"Foul play?"

"Entirely unrelated. The location of the last murder was a house that had previously belonged to an eighty-seven year old woman who died of natural causes." 

"So someone using houses he knows will be vacant," John mused. 

"Exactly," Sally shook her head. "The profile they're building is looking at a male, serial killers usually are, but—" 

"Something else weird?" 

"Interviews with the victims' families. In each case, the victim had recently begun dating someone new. Someone they thought was _perfect._ " 

"That's your guy," John said.

"Yeah," Sally said, smiling wryly. "Except no one can agree on what this so-called _perfect_ man looked like. Or what his name is. Or where he lives. Or how to contact him. Or, really, anything at all useful." 

"Social media?"

"Nothing at all. This guy's a ghost. And, John," she frowned, looked down at her plate, grimaced. "Each of the victims were found with their livers ripped out. And I do mean ripped. No cutting tools were used."

John raised his brows. "Bare hands?" 

"Hands, possibly even teeth, but he's left no forensic evidence behind. No prints. No hair. No skin cells. No saliva. Nothing. It shouldn't be possible." 

"Sounds like an X File," John mused.

Sally bristled. "Don't get carried away. But—" 

John leaned back in his chair, sighed. It was rapidly becoming clear that Sally hadn't called him up out of the blue because she'd decided she'd always found him devastatingly attractive (he _had_ hoped), or even because she'd wanted to renew a friendship following the good times they'd had at the academy. 

"Want me to run the case notes past Sherlock?" he asked. 

She stopped speaking, shot him a relieved smile. "If he'd like to help you do an old friend a favor, that would be great."

"I'll see if he's interested," John said. 

"John, just—" Sally hesitated. "Just make sure he knows it's my case." 

"Right," John said, smiling tightly. "Your case."

*

"Victoria Usher, friends called her Vicky," John said, reading off of the file in his hands as he and Sherlock ducked under the police tape. "Thirty-six years old. Found yesterday morning by a real estate agent who'd stopped by to take some photographs of the house for showing. Autopsy puts the time of death as sometime Friday night." 

"Single," Sherlock said. "Lived alone. No family or family out of town." 

"Yeah," John said. "Did you—"

Sherlock huffed an impatient little sigh. "Woman goes missing on a Friday night, her body's discovered on a Tuesday morning. No missing person report filed, ergo, no one close enough to notice she was gone." 

"I don't know why I question you," John said. 

"Neither do I." 

They stepped further into the living room, looked around. 

Not her house," Sherlock said, his eyes making a cursory sweep, skimming over faded wallpaper and a large collection of decorative plates painted in cherub motifs. 

"No," John agreed. "House belonged to an Edna Sullivan, eighty-seven years old, recently deceased. Natural causes. No connection." 

"Your friend—" 

"Colleague."

"Your colleague, who indirectly asked for my assistance. Why did she opt for the indirect approach?" 

John swallowed, glanced up. Sherlock was looking at him intently. He was, in fact, looking rather intense all around, in his dark coat with its collar up, a scowl on his face. Like some kind of grim and fearsome specter that had come sweeping in out of the shadows, and nothing at all like the oddball who leaned back in his chair and threw pencils at the ceiling out of boredom and who lit up like a kid at Christmas while projecting images of gruesome murders onto their office walls. 

Right now, Sherlock very much looked the part of the brooding, on-edge criminal profiler, a man that, if Hollywoodized versions told the truth, had only the most tenuous grip on reality. A necessary evil. A freak. _The_ Freak, to be exact. 

"Like you said," John said. "I knew Agent Donovan back at the academy. I'm sure she just felt more comfortable approaching me." 

"Why would I make her uncomfortable?" That, from the man currently doing his best to look like Dracula, hissing away from sunlight. 

"Ah," John said, glancing around the room. "That probably has something to do with your reputation." 

Sherlock blinked. "Reputation? I have a reputation?" 

"You know you do," John said patiently, shaking his head. 

"Ah," Sherlock said, a satisfied sound, looking John up and down. He set back on his heels, smug.

Dammit. John grit his teeth. "What?"

"Agent Donovan contacted you in a professional capacity. You mistook her advances for romantic interest, likely due to nostalgia and good feelings associated with your academy days, you'd have shared a certain camaraderie. You realized your mistake before publicly humiliating yourself—well observed, John—but can't quite shake the lingering embarrassment over having been so off the mark in the first place." 

"No," John said.

There were voices, through the hallway. Approaching. 

"No?" Sherlock was smirking now, pleased with himself. "Was I wrong?" 

"No, you're not wrong. No, we're not doing this now." 

"John," Sally said, coming through the doorframe, two uniformed policemen behind her. "Thank you for coming." 

"Can't fault you," Sherlock said, his voice low in John's ear. "You've had abysmal luck over the past few months. It's only logical that you might try your hand with someone in the same line of work, in the hopes that she'd be more understanding of the time commitments and abrupt interruptions inherent to your job." 

"Inherent to you, you mean," John hissed, and then plastered a smile onto his face, taking a hasty step away from Sherlock. "Sally Donovan, this is Sherlock Holmes." 

"The Freak, in the flesh," she said, smiling. "Heard a lot about you." 

She extended her hand.

Sherlock shook it cautiously, his eyes flitting over her. There was something guarded in his expression. 

_Probably has to do with being called Freak,_ John thought.

"So, what do you think? Work of little green men?" Sally was smirking a little, egging him on. 

She'd heard the stories, of course. They all had. She wanted to see him dance. Before knowing Sherlock himself, John might have thought the same way. 

"Gray," Sherlock said, tone distracted. He wandered away from her, swept his eyes over the disordered living room. An ugly glass-and-brass coffee table had been shattered, the edges dark with dried blood. There was a dark stain set into the faded powder-blue carpet. He crouched down, frowned at it. 

"Sorry, what?" Sally said. 

John groaned, shifted uncomfortably where he stood. 

"Gray," Sherlock said again. His tone was deadly serious. "You said green men. A common error. Reticulan skin tone is actually gray. And they're notorious for their extraction of terrestrial human organs. Hearts and livers, mostly. High nutritive value." 

Sally blinked, looked from Sherlock to John. "You—is—was that—"

"Very serious problem you have here," Sherlock said. "Extraterrestrial organ trafficking. These livers are probably already on their way out of our galaxy. Excuse me." 

He brushed past her, left the room. 

John winced, rubbed at the back of his neck. Sally was staring at him. 

"Yeah," he said, shaking his head. "That's Sherlock." 

"They talk about him, all the time, in the VCU," Sally said. "A lot of people think he's completely gone off the deep end. I thought that he just—my God, John, it's not fair what they've done to you. Sticking you down there with him."

"Hang on," John said, bristling. "He's not crazy. That was just—"

She shook her head. "Forget it. This case, John. If we don't come up with some answers, it's likely the killer will strike again. And we're running out of time." 

"Does anyone happen to have a spare evidence bag?" Sherlock drawled from the hallway. He had squared himself up rather stiffly, was studying them through narrowed eyes. 

Sally gave John an unreadable look, followed Sherlock into a small bathroom off the hallway. She handed him a baggie, the plastic crinkling against her latex gloves. "What did you find?" 

Sherlock dropped to the ground next to the sink. He nudged a papery substance with a gloved index finger. 

The sight of it made John shudder. "Looks like an—like an insect wing. Or casing, maybe. Exoskeleton. Part of one, at least. Big. Cicada, maybe?" 

"Mm," Sherlock said, his eyes unfocused, miles away. He carefully drew the object into the baggie, sealed it. 

"An insect wing," Sally said flatly. She crossed her arms. "Going to check for termites next?"

Sherlock stood back up, nudged her out of the way so he was standing in front of the sink, looking into the mirror. He tipped his head forward, then backwards. Reached out as if to grip the glass, stopped just shy of touching it. 

"What, you forget to gel your hair?" Sally asked snidely, turning away. "I don't believe this." 

John watched her go, pinched the bridge of his nose. He looked back at Sherlock, who was now carefully dusting the edge of the mirror with fingerprint dust. 

"Is there a point to all of this?" he asked quietly,

"I certainly hope so," Sherlock said. He stepped back, cocked his head, looked at the mirror. 

John followed his gaze, his eyes catching on the long narrow fingerprint that had been revealed by Sherlock's careful handiwork.

Like the insect remnant, there was something off about it, something at once familiar and yet _wrong_ , wrong in a way that made him feel slightly dizzy, unsettled. 

He looked at Sherlock, wondering if he felt the same. 

Sherlock's eyes were on the print, wide with curiosity, alight with fascination. 

*

John's apartment, admittedly drab, was not much improved with the addition of the crime scene photos. 

John pinned them up to a bulletin board in a brief spree of gruesome home decorating, stood regarding them. He'd obtained copies of autopsy reports for each victim, reviewed the findings. 

Four victims. Two males, two females. Official cause of death: blood loss. The liver had been removed in each case, the skin a ragged, bloody mess. Not a surgical extraction; a violent one. Performed while the victims were alive, conscious. 

It would have been painful. Terrifying. 

The thought of it made him feel ill, the way he often did when he contemplated what it took for a human being to deliberately hurt another in such a way. 

Vicky Usher, the most recent victim, had been killed on a Friday night. As had all of the others, according to Donovan. Four Friday nights in a row. Four people, happily setting out to meet up with their date. Their perfect date, the one they'd gushed about to friends and family. 

It was Wednesday now. If the pattern held, two days until he hurt someone else. 

He sat down on his little sofa, spread the autopsy reports out in front of him. 

Vicky Usher had fought. At some point, she had been thrown into a glass coffee table. The coroner had noted and removed several shards of glass from her arm.

The struggle had been fierce. Broken glass all over the floor. By all rights, the killer should have left behind some kind of DNA evidence. But forensics on the blood stain had returned only one result: a match to Vicky Usher. Type O-negative blood. 

He noted the blood type with mild interest, the way he always did when someone turned up O-negative. It was one of the rarer blood types, and one that he shared. 

He flipped to the file of the previous victim, Michael Charlotte. Gardener by trade, reported missing by his roommate after not returning home from a date. He'd been found in an empty home in Evergreen, liver torn out. 

There was no consistency to the crime scenes, other than the means of death. This killer was not interested in ritual, in ceremony. He did not display or arrange the bodies in any particular way. They were left where they had died, in whatever position they'd fallen. 

Once again, no DNA but the victim's found at the scene. John skimmed over the blood typing. Type O-negative. 

He froze, lunged for the next file. Stephen Bainbridge, security guard, found in a home in Roland Park. Type O-negative blood. 

Heart pounding, he picked up the last file. The earliest victim, Robyn Gail. Chef at a small up-and-coming restaurant. Found dead in a sprawling home in Wyndhurst. He scanned the autopsy results. 

Type O-negative blood. 

He snatched up his phone, dialed Sherlock. 

"The blood type," he said when he answered, not bothering with a greeting. "The victims are all type O-negative. It's rare, Sherlock, too rare to be a coincidence. It's only found in approximately seven percent of the population." 

"You think he's choosing them based on blood type," Sherlock said, speaking slowly, as if trying the idea on for size. "That's your medical opinion?" 

"I think there's a good possibility, yeah. I'm going to call Agent Donovan, suggest that her team start checking the blood banks. The victims may have donated blood recently. Their names could be on a registry. That could be how he's choosing them." 

"Mm, no. Bainbridge and Charlotte," Sherlock said. "Would likely have been restricted from donating blood under current FDA regulations."

"We don't know anything about their history," John said. "Mistake to theorize without all the facts, right? They may have donated in the past." 

After all, the vast majority of his own terrible relationship choices had been with women, right up until he'd enlisted and realized he was perfectly capable of making equally poor decisions on the other side of the fence as well. 

There was silence on the other end of the line. A loaded silence. The kind of silence that, John was quickly learning, meant that Sherlock had retreated into his own mind, was rerouting the connections he'd already formed to accommodate new information. 

"John," Sherlock said. "If—" 

"He's not a vampire," John said quickly. He cleared his throat. "Just. So we're clear."

"Don't be ridiculous, John," Sherlock snorted. "Vampires have no interest in the liver." 

*

"It's Christmas," Sherlock said, as John appeared in the office doorway. 

"No, it's April," John said, sitting down in front of Sherlock's desk. It was, as always, piled high with an odd assortment of clutter. He wondered if it should alarm him, thinking in terms of _always_ , when he'd barely known the man for more than two months. 

"What?" Distracted. Then: "No. No! Not actually Christmas. Look." 

Sherlock dropped two thick files right onto John's lap. Dust exploded off of them, puffing up into John's face with the scent of old paper. 

"What—" he started, eyes watering, nose prickling. 

"That print I found?" Sherlock said. "Forensics ran it last night. There was no match in our systems." 

"Damn," John said, shaking his head. He'd been hopeful. "Although, there's no guarantee it was the perpetrator anyway. Any number of people could have been in Edna Sullivan's bathroom." 

"They ran comparisons on her family and friends. No match. It's him." Sherlock sounded certain, as if considering other possibilities was a complete waste of time. Clearly, the idea of a plumber or electrician in the house, muddying the waters with his own DNA, had not occurred. 

John frowned, scratched at his chin. The print had been unusual. Exactly where someone would have grabbed at the mirror to steady himself, if…

To check to make sure they'd properly cleaned up after a particularly gory murder? 

Sherlock still looked absurdly pleased with himself. "But something about the crime scene yesterday stuck out to me. So I did a bit of digging. There have been ten other murders, all in the Baltimore area, matching the profile of this case." He grinned, face lighting up with an enthusiasm that might have been charming had it not been for such a gruesome reason. "John, the victims all had their livers removed." 

John sneezed. 

Sherlock made an impatient noise, plucked the files from his lap. 

"Donovan didn't say anything about ten murders," John said, swiping at his nose. 

In fact, Donovan had been over the moon about the blood type suggestion. "I knew it was a good idea to bring you in on this," she'd said, her voice warm over the phone. "This was a damn good catch, John. The kind of thing that makes careers." 

"She's likely unaware of them," Sherlock said, still grinning. He looked like he wanted to spin in circles for the sheer joy of it all. "She was probably still in diapers when these five murders occurred—" he held up the one folder to illustrate. "And these murders would have happened, well, possibly before her mother was even born." He waggled the second folder. 

"What?" John blinked. He looked the folders in Sherlock's hands, the paper discolored, stiff and musty with age. "Are you saying those murders are more than thirty years old?" 

"From 1980 and 1950, respectively. And I was able to find record of a murder in 1920 involving an extracted liver, although the details were unfortunately vague. Poor record keeping, really, although—" 

"Sherlock. What are you trying to say?" John sighed.

"There was a distinct lack of evidence at the all of the crime scenes. Unusual, for a crime so violent. But a print _was_ found at one of the murder scenes in 1980. It was a poor print, smudged. They weren't able to lift it cleanly. Useless. But…" he opened the file, showed John a printout. A fingerprint, oddly long, narrow. The whorls muddled, smeared. 

"It looks similar," John allowed. "The length of the finger. It's unusual, I'll give you that. But you said it yourself, that wasn't a clean lift. You know as well as I do that fingerprints are unique, and there can be minute differences invisible to the naked eye—" 

"John," Sherlock interrupted, eyes still shining, bright with excitement. "Look at the length of the prints. The shape of the fingers. This is the same man. I couldn't prove it in court, but I don't need to right now. We just need to find him." 

"Right," John said, barely clinging to patience. "I do know that, Sherlock. But if you're not suggesting a copycat, then that means that you're saying that this killer, the one who manages to lure his victims in by pretending to be 'the perfect man,' is somewhere around a hundred years old." 

Sherlock did not look as though he were even slightly aware of how ridiculous that sounded. 

"Five murders every thirty years," Sherlock said. "That leaves one more." 

"A hundred year old serial killer, Sherlock?" John shut his eyes, pinched his brow. "Oh, God, it's the vampire thing isn't it? I was right. You do think it's—" 

"Of course not," Sherlock looked almost offended. 

"Sherlock," he said. "Please tell me you understand why this is not—I can't go back to Donovan with that." 

"There's no actual need for you to provide this theory to Donovan," Sherlock said, sly, studying his wall of odd photographs with a forced casualness. 

John looked at him. "That tone. I know that tone. You're planning something I'm not going to like." 

A smile caught the edge of Sherlock's lips. "You made it very clear from the start that the ongoing investigation in Baltimore is Donovan's case." 

"Yes. It is. And—" 

"But—" Sherlock held up a hand, hushing him. "—technically speaking, these unsolved X Files go back sixty years. It was our case first." 

John blew out a frustrated breath. "Sherlock, it's logic like that that makes people want to hit you." 

"I am aware," Sherlock said, and John thought that might very well be true. "In any case, there's nothing to stop us from pursuing this particular lead. If it pans out, you can hand her a suspect on a silver platter, be the hero of the hour. If it doesn't—well." He smiled, this one tight and false. "Then there's no need to embarrass yourself in front of an old friend." 

"Fine," John said, shutting his eyes, assuming he'd likely live to regret this.

"Good," Sherlock sounded pleased. "I've discovered a pattern." 

John opened his eyes. "A pattern. Other than the obvious, you mean?" 

Sherlock smiled, a small private thing, looked away. Smiles could occasionally be surprised out of him with a certain degree of well-timed irreverence, John had started to learn.

"We knew that the most recent set of victims were found in vacant houses belonging to someone recently deceased." 

"Right," John said.

"Well. The houses that have been chosen have all been within a week of the homeowner's passing." 

"So he's careful," John said slowly, considering. "Doesn't want to wait too long and wind up surprised by the next-of-kin."

"Yeees," Sherlock said, drawing the word out, hesitating. "But it's more than that. Where is he getting his information?" 

"Obituaries," John said. "Has to be. Within a week of the homeowner's passing? He's checking the papers." 

"Excellent, John, I thought so too. So I spent the morning going through archives." 

"I thought you spent the morning researching old cases involving removed livers." 

"I did both." Sherlock smoothed his jacket, sniffed. 

"Must have been a busy morning."

"Are you through?"

John smiled, gestured with his hand for Sherlock to keep talking. 

Sherlock took a breath, shot him a stern look, continued. "Obituaries for three of the homeowners appeared in various papers in the Baltimore area. No help there. But the fourth—" 

"Edna Sullivan, the most recent?" 

"Her obituary only ran in one paper. The _Sun._ " 

John perked up, interested. "And has the _Sun_ published any new obituaries since the last murder?" 

"They have," Sherlock was smirking, a little I'm-So-Clever expression that he occasionally seemed to find impossible to rein in. He passed John a list of names, addresses. 

"Right. So we should tell Donovan, have her mobilize her task force. We'll have to do checks on all of these people, find the ones who lived alone, arrange surveillance on the residences—and don't make that face, Sherlock, there are more names on your list than we can possibly cover ourselves. We can share the _Sun_ connection without giving her additional speculation on the—the hundred year old serial killer." 

"A stakeout tonight won't yield anything. It's Thursday. He takes his victims on Fridays," Sherlock said. "I've compiled a list—" 

John frowned. 

Sherlock noticed it, gave him a sour look. "You disagree?" 

"You're right, of course—" he paused to scowl at Sherlock's suddenly smug expression, "—that the last four victims were killed on a Friday night. But you can't honestly think that the first time he goes to a location is _with the victim,_ Sherlock, what if he gets there and discovers that the house has been overrun with relatives from out of state?" 

Sherlock blinked. "He has a list of houses to choose from. Surely not all would be—" 

"Sherlock. If he's got someone with him, on a date, he can't exactly go 'oh, oops, wrong house,' and then take them somewhere else." 

Sherlock nodded slowly, leaned back in his chair, his fleeting expression of confusion smoothing over into something far more certain. "He's casing the houses." 

"Yeah, he has to be." 

"It's Thursday," Sherlock said, thoughtful this time. "A good night for a trial run." 

"Very good night for a trial run," John agreed. 

*

They met Donovan and her team in a briefing room. The look she aimed in Sherlock's direction was not particularly friendly, and a sharp contrast to the warm one she saved for John. 

"All right," she said, placing both hands face down on the table in front of her. "We know that this guy is likely choosing his locations from the _Sun_ obituaries. We know that, if he holds true to pattern, he will be taking another victim tomorrow night. That leaves us with a little over twenty-four hours to find him." 

"We have someone doing a check on the obits now," the agent to her left said. "Preliminary results are showing fourteen possible locations where the recently deceased lived alone." 

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. 

John caught the motion out in his peripheral vision, tensed, waited for him to speak. He said nothing. 

"He needs somewhere he knows is unoccupied—" Donovan said. 

"Hence the dead homeowners," Sherlock said. 

She closed her mouth, looked at him. He stared blandly back at her. 

John shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "Seclusion," he said. "That rules out condominiums, row houses, anything like that. Too much chance at being spotted by someone. He's careful."

Sherlock made a muffled, impatient sound.

"But—" John said, faltering slightly, glancing at Sherlock. "He's not taking them outside the city. There's no—no cliché, well-hidden farmhouse or cabin. Nothing that would raise suspicion or make a victim less cooperative." 

"Right," Donovan said. "So, ruling out the condominiums—" 

"Maybe narrows it down to ten or eleven?" the agent to her left offered.

Sherlock had begun tapping his fingers on the table. 

"Is there anything you'd like to add, Agent Holmes?" Donovan snapped. 

Sherlock stopped drumming his fingers. "Hm? Oh, no, not at all. Please, do, go on." 

"Right," Donovan said again, waiting another beat, staring him down. "Ten or eleven residences. We'll be arranging checks and surveillance in pairs, starting with—" 

"Oh," John said, and sat up straight. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sherlock lean back in his chair, looking suddenly pleased with himself. 

"Agent Watson?" there was an edge of hope to Donovan's voice. "Have you thought of something else?" 

"He's presenting himself as 'the perfect man,' right?" John asked. He cleared his throat. "That's what all of the victims' friends and families seemed to think. In each case, the victim was very excited about having met someone new. There's something to that." 

Donovan's fledgling enthusiasm seemed to flag. "They've all given conflicting physical descriptions. He's changing his hair color, using contacts. He has no social media presence, not even a fake account. It's a dead end." 

"No," John said. "Not the descriptions. Think about it—he's presenting an idealized version of himself. Something that makes his victims want to go along with him. It's a fantasy, and not even one he has to maintain for very long. He's able to make them trust him, trust him enough to go off alone with him to a secluded location in spite of not knowing him for very long. How is he doing that? He's making himself seem—I don't know. Too good to be true. Perfect. Available. Interested. Wealthy. Look at the addresses on the previous locations—he's not just choosing empty houses, he's choosing empty houses in affluent neighborhoods. Very affluent."

"The site of the most recent attack was a large house in a good neighborhood," Sherlock piped up, leaning back in his chair. "The interior was dated and badly in need of updating, but that wasn't apparent from the street. He doesn't need to make them comfortable for long, he just needs to get them inside." 

"That should narrow your list down," John said, feeling a flush of excitement, of something resembling pride. He looked over at Sherlock. 

He was smiling, a small smile. Pleased. He met John's eyes, nodded once.

*

The house was a large colonial, tree-shaded, set back a ways from the street. The porch light was on, throwing off a warm golden glow. It drew the eye, making the entrance look inviting, in spite of the darkened windows. 

"It's on a timer," Sherlock said, voice bored. "Keeps things looking nice from the street. Keeps things looking _occupied._ " 

"Mm," John agreed mildly, rubbing at gritty eyes. They'd been sitting in relative silence for an hour. Sherlock must be terribly bored if he was commenting on things like light switch timers. He smiled. "I feel lied to." 

Sherlock looked sharply at him. "What? Why?" 

"Stakeouts aren't nearly as exciting as the movies made them seem," John said, shifting again, trying to get comfortable. 

"You expected this to be exciting?"

"Wouldn’t have minded." 

Sherlock didn't respond, but he did not turn away, either. John sat still for a long moment, staring out the window, all too conscious of that appraising gaze. 

"You must be bored out of your skull," he said, finally, turning back. 

Sherlock blinked. "I—yes, actually. I am." 

"Right. All right. What should we do to pass the time?" 

The look Sherlock gave him was utterly, completely baffled. John sighed.

"What do you normally do?" he tried. 

Sherlock shook his head slowly, still looking far more confounded than the question called for. "I… think."

John pinched his brow, sighed again. "I think you do enough of that." 

"What would you have me do?" Sherlock said, at once curious and disdainful. "Listen to sports radio?" 

John laughed, shook his head. "No. God no. I can't even picture—no." 

"Then what?" 

"I don't know," John said. "I don't know. Games? Conversation? Getting-to-know-you stuff?" 

"I've known you for months now." 

John laughed again, this time at himself. He shook his head. "Never mind." 

Silence fell between them again, less comfortable than before. He could practically hear the gears turning in Sherlock's head. 

"What do you want to know?" Sherlock asked, finally, turning to face John once more.

"Nothing specific," John said, shaking his head. "Just—I don't know. We're friends, yeah? Friends know things about each other." 

"Friends," Sherlock said, pronouncing the word as if it fit strangely in his mouth. 

"Yes," John said. "I'll start, then, shall I? My father was—" 

"—a military man, hmm…Navy if I had to guess. You held him in high regard, sought to follow in his footsteps, but you've also displayed a certain rebellious streak that would have kept you from following _too_ closely. He was less than enthused by your decision to enlist rather than go into practice after medical school—he'd be a practical man, would have viewed your failure to follow through on your training as a waste of time and resources. He might have gotten over his disappointment had you chosen the Navy. Instead, you chose the Army, and as he died before you returned from overseas, it's likely that things were left unresolved between you. You have a brother you disapprove of, likely a drinker. And your career thus far has been characterized by an almost pathological fear of commitment." 

John sucked in a breath. "Um." 

Sherlock shut his mouth with a click, looked away. There was a hitch in his breathing. 

"How did you—" 

"No one starts a getting-to-know-you conversation with 'my father' unless he has unresolved issues." 

John laughed. It felt weak, slightly dazed. 

"And the—" 

"Simple observation," Sherlock said. "You spent nine minutes last Friday pacing the hallway outside the office, berating someone named Harry over the telephone for making poor choices. You became agitated and ended the call without deploying the appropriate salutations." Sherlock hesitated, glanced at John out of the corner of his eye before continuing. "You don't seem to maintain close friendships. Certainly no one close enough that you'd feel comfortable speaking to them like that. Family relation, then. A sibling is the most likely choice." 

"And the drinking?" John asked, partially horrified, partially numb, partially amazed. He'd spent the last few months watching Sherlock do this, had even had it turned on him on occasion. It never ceased to be awe-inspiring. 

"Your conversation took place at 5:30 PM on a Friday," Sherlock said. "You spoke loudly, repeated yourself on occasion. That indicated he was somewhere he couldn't hear you very well. Given the time and the day, 'happy hour' seemed the likely conclusion. If there were no underlying issues, you'd have simply wished him a good evening and made plans to speak another time. The fact that you continued to attempt conversation implied that you disapproved of the way he was choosing to spend his evening. And what kind of person might earn the disapproval of his brother by spending Friday night in a bar? A drinker." 

John drew in a breath. 

Sherlock cleared his throat, looked away. "So, you see, there's no need to have these kinds of tedious conversations. Everything I could possibly need to know, I've already observed." 

A sweep of headlights around a bend in the road briefly illuminated Sherlock's face. He glanced sharply at John, who tensed, reaching for his phone. 

The car slowed as it approached. 

"Donovan," John said into his phone. "It's Agent Watson. We have activity at our location. Car approaching from the west." 

"Is it him?" 

"I—" he hesitated. The car decelerated to a crawl as it passed the house. 

"It's him," Sherlock said. 

The car, a new Toyota, he could see now, hybrid model, turned into the driveway, flipped its headlights off. 

"It's him," John said. "Send a car." 

He hung up, looked over at Sherlock. Nodded. 

They slid out of the car into the quiet darkness, guns drawn. Sherlock loped across the street, John hurrying to match his long strides. They did not speak. 

They crossed the lawn, footsteps whispering through short grass rather than risk being heard on pavement. 

There was a figure, shrouded in shadows, standing near the rear entrance to the house. 

"FBI," John shouted, dropping into a fighting stance, shoulders squared, feet apart. He trained his gun on the suspect, hands steady. "FREEZE!"

The figure froze immediately, shoulders hunched. After a pause, he lifted his hands over his head. 

"Don't shoot," he said, voice soft. "Please." 

"Turn around," Sherlock said, his voice very close behind John. "Slowly." 

He turned, his face pale and frightened in the dark. He was younger than John had expected, hair messy and shaggy, partially hidden by a drawn hooded sweatshirt. There was a day's worth of stubble on his jaw. 

His gaze caught on John, and for a moment, the briefest of moments, his eyes almost seemed to gleam yellow in the moonlight. Then he blinked and the strange illusion shattered. 

"This is—I'm not who you think—" he said, stammering. "I'm a photographer. I'm working on a story. That's all. Please don't shoot me." 

"Hands behind your back," Sherlock said, smooth, calm, in control. He snapped cuffs around the man's wrists. "You are under arrest for the murder of Victoria Usher. Anything you say…" 

There were sirens, now, growing in intensity, drowning out the sound of Sherlock reading the suspect his rights. Donovan had called in the cavalry. 

John holstered his weapon, went down the drive to meet them.

*

John stood, watching, as the police cruiser carrying their suspect disappeared down the road, blue and red lights splashing across fresh-mown lawns and well-maintained homes. Several neighborhood residents had emerged from their houses, stood in nervous clusters on the sidewalk, watching and whispering amongst themselves. 

"Come on," he said to Sherlock. "We'll meet up with Donovan at the station. I'd like to be a part of the questioning." 

Sherlock nodded without speaking, headed for the car. There was an odd sort of tension on his face. 

"You all right?" John asked, settling into the passenger seat, clicking his seat belt into place.

Sherlock looked at him, frowned. "Why wouldn't I be all right?" 

"No reason," he said. "You just seem quiet." 

Sherlock opened his mouth, shut it again, furrowed up his brow. "I often go for days at a time without speaking." 

John barked out a laugh, the sound startlingly loud in the close confines of the car. "No. No, you really don't." 

Brow still furrowed, Sherlock started the engine, pulled out onto the road.

"Was I right?" he asked, finally, after a long silence. His voice was a study in forced nonchalance. 

"Right?" 

"Earlier. About the. Getting-to-know-you stuff." 

"Oh," John said. He let out a huff of breath that might have been a laugh, might have been a sigh. "More or less. Yeah. Father was in the Navy, decidedly not approving of my decision to enlist in the Army out of medical school, died before I got back. Heart attack. And, it's, ah, not particularly flattering, but I suppose you _could_ say that my career has been defined by a pathological fear of commitment, and Harry is very much a drinker." 

"Ah," Sherlock said. He sounded pleased, but tentatively so, as if he were still waiting for the other shoe to drop. "Got it all, then." 

"Harry's short for Harriet." 

"Sister," Sherlock said, jaw dropping a little bit. He sounded dismayed. 

"And I didn't choose the Army over the Navy because of my—my rebellious streak, or whatever you said. I enlisted in the Army because I wanted to run away from a stupid decision, and they were the first ones that would take me." 

That was putting it lightly, John thought. But it wasn't like Sherlock needed all of the sordid details.

Sherlock glanced at him, his expression inscrutable.

John scratched at the back of his neck. "And because I didn't want to be exactly like my father, fine, yes, all right." 

Sherlock's lip curved up. "Thought so." 

"Yeah, well. Don't let it go to your head." 

*

The suspect's name was Jonathan Small, and he claimed to work for the Baltimore _Sun_. 

"I'm a photographer," he said, looking small and pale and terrified where he sat in a hard plastic chair. "I've just begun work on an article about class divides in the city." 

"You were trespassing," Donovan said. "What were you doing at that house?" 

"My editor," he said, swiping at his face with the back of his hand. "Gave me a list of neighborhoods that might be good for the story. I've been driving around all night, getting a feel for the places. Planning out what I wanted to shoot. I wanted to come back early tomorrow, when the lighting was right, you know?" 

"You pulled right into the driveway," John said.

"Look, I knew the house would be empty," Small said, looking down at his lap. "I looked through our obituaries. It's not—I didn't want to have to deal with residents. People who might not want their homes used in a piece like this. It's not going to be particularly flattering." 

"Did you kill Victoria Usher?" Donovan asked.

He shook his head, slow, bewildered. There were tears pooling in his eyes. "What? That lady on the news? The—oh my God, you think I did that? Oh my God. Oh my God." He put his head down at the table, made a little moaning sound of distress. "I was just looking for a good location to take some pictures. That's all. That's _all._ " 

"Victoria Usher," John said, setting a photograph on the table in front of Small. He cringed away from it, shook his head. "Stephen Bainbridge." Another photograph onto the table, the stark black-and-white aftermath of violence. "Robyn Gail. Michael Charlotte." 

"Why are you showing me this? I didn't kill anyone." 

"They were all found in empty houses too," Donovan said. "Houses found through your newspaper's obituaries. So you do see what this looks like." 

The door to the little interrogation room creaked open behind John, and Small lifted his head to take note of the new arrival. 

John did not have to turn around to know it was Sherlock, who had no doubt grown bored lingering, useless, behind the mirrored wall. 

"How about Tessa Higgins?" Sherlock asked, his voice low and dark. 

Small's head snapped up. "What?" 

Donovan's jaw had dropped slightly, and she cut her eyes towards John, questioning. He frowned, shook his head slightly. 

Sherlock positively _stalked_ into the room, still wearing his coat, collar still turned up. If John did not know him as well as he did by now, he supposed the sight would be rather terrifying. Hell, it _was_ rather terrifying. 

"Tessa Higgins," Sherlock said again. "Powhatan Mill. 1980." 

"1980?" Donovan mouthed to John, looking aghast.

He winced. 

"I—" Small said. His face had gone very, very white. "I—" 

"Found in an empty house with her liver torn out," Sherlock said. "Not ringing a bell? How about George Humphrey? Found in the same neighborhood, only a few streets over." 

"I was born in 1982," Small said. "I don't—I don't know—" he looked at Donovan, helpless, beseeching. "I don't know what he's talking about. I think I need a lawyer." 

John shut his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose. 

*

"What. The. _Hell_. Was. That." Donovan practically ground the words out, stalking back and forth in the corridor like a caged animal. 

"Just asking a few questions," Sherlock said, voice mild. He had not lowered the collar on his coat, had not relaxed his stiff posture. 

"Sherlock," John said, voice low. "Those questions—" 

"Did you see his face?" Sherlock interrupted. There was a gleam in his eyes, a sort of mania to his expression that John was coming to know quite well. "His _face_ , John, when I mentioned Tessa Higgins?"

"I'm betting you didn't see _my_ face when you brought that up," Donovan said. "Because I think you'll find the expression was similar, Freak." 

Sherlock glanced at her, seemed to dismiss her entirely, turned back towards John. His voice dropped, ever-so-slightly. "It's him, John." 

"And what is all of this 1980 nonsense?" Donovan snapped. 

Sherlock rolled his eyes, turned back towards her. "These killings fit a pattern. Every thirty years, Agent Donovan. Five victims. Livers torn out. I have files going back to 1920. Possibly even earlier, but recordkeeping was spotty at best, and—" 

"Are you trying to make me believe that man was alive in 1920?" Donovan started to laugh, a sharp sound, half-stunned. She put her hand over her mouth, shook her head. "Oh my God. I can't believe I'm even listening to this." 

"No need to continue listening, then," Sherlock said, turning his back on her once more, crowding her out of the conversation, turning his full focus on John.

John sighed as he heard Donovan's heels click away down the hallway. 

"Why did you push it, Sherlock?" 

Sherlock scowled, his face scrunching up. "What?" 

"You knew there wasn't a chance in hell that anyone would believe you. So why did you push it?" 

"Because it's the truth." 

John laughed, a miserable sound, full of ill humor. "You really believe that? You really believe that guy in there is a hundred year old serial killer?" 

"What if I do?" his voice was petulant, defensive.

"You don't see how that's a little hard to swallow?" John looked away, stared down the empty corridor for a moment before turning his attention back to Sherlock. "Especially for someone like Agent Donovan, who is trying very hard to do this by the book?" 

"John, in the course of my work, I've run into so many people who are hostile," Sherlock spoke slowly, looking somewhere over John's shoulder, his gaze fixed. "Hostile just because they can't open their minds to the possibilities. Sometimes—sometimes I cannot resist the need to mess with their heads. A bit." 

"Yeah that's not—" John felt his mouth wanting to turn up into a smile, which was utterly inappropriate. "That's a little bit not good, Sherlock." 

He wanted to reach out and smooth down the lapels of that ridiculous coat, transform Sherlock from prowling Bureau oddity back to the (admittedly still odd) man he knew. He wanted this so badly that his palms twitched with the urge, and he pressed them flat against the sides of his legs in an effort to resist humiliating himself by acting on his sudden and unwelcome surge of affection. 

Sherlock blinked his attention away from the wall, looked fully at John. He blinked again, and his lips quirked in the barest suggestion of an answering smile. "Ah. Well. I—" 

"Agents," Donovan called. 

John and Sherlock both turned towards her, moving in sync. She was standing at the end of the corridor, arms folded. 

"You're letting him go," Sherlock's voice was flat as they approached. 

"We can't hold him," Donovan said. "His story checks out. He's working on an assignment for the _Sun_ , just like he said. His editor confirms everything." 

"He wasn't staging photographs of the house _in the dark_ ," Sherlock said, his voice low, startlingly vehement. 

"No," Donovan said. "He wasn't. He was looking at several locations on his list, deciding which was worth his while to return to in the morning."

"It was suspicious," John said. Then he frowned. "It _is_ suspicious. Especially in light of what we know—"

"Yeah, it is," she said, softening her voice slightly as she spoke to him. "And I'm not saying it was wrong to bring him in. But he's not our guy." 

"What about the other murders? Surely he—" 

"He's got an alibi," Donovan said. "His editor confirms it. He's been working late the last four Fridays." 

"What about the print?" Sherlock asked.

"No match," she said. "But you already knew that. It would be a different story if it were." 

"He killed those people," Sherlock said. "And he's going to do it again, and then he's going to disappear for another thirty years. And you're just going to let him go." 

She stared at him for a moment, a long moment. Then she glanced at John. "Agent Watson, a word?" 

John shut his eyes, nodded. He followed her around the corner without a backwards glance at Sherlock. 

"Look," John said. "I know how it sounds—" 

"Then I won't bother telling you," she said. She crossed her arms, leaned against the wall, studied him. "I don't know who you pissed off to get stuck with him." 

He laughed without much humor, leaned against the wall next to her, mirroring her posture. "That's what he said, you know, the first time I met him." 

"It's true. You're a good agent, John. The blood type connections, the houses—that all came from you." 

He pursed his lips, didn't speak. 

"It was a good theory, John," Donovan continued, her voice low. "That he'd be casing the houses. And he probably was—just not last night." 

"There's something off about this guy," John said. He thought about the strange look on Small's face when they'd come upon him in the shadows, the way his eyes had seemed, for just the most fleeting of moments, not quite human.

"That's the Freak talking, not you." 

He bristled, in spite of himself. "You shouldn't call him that. What he can do, it's—." 

"You think they call him that because of what he can _do?_ " There was incredulity in her voice. She shook her head. "It's not what he can do that bothers people, John. It's how he does it. He enjoys it. He gets off on it. The more gruesome the crime, the more he—" 

"Oh, come on," John said, pushing off of the wall, pacing across the room. "I never knew you to be a gossip, Sally." 

Sally looked at him, concern written in the lines of her face. "You didn't see him back then, John. Back when he worked in the VCU. All of those serial killer cases. And him right there, eyes lit up, clapping his hands like a kid on Christmas morning. Standing in a pool of blood, body parts all around, right in the middle of the worst—the absolute _worst_ that humanity has to offer—and just… grinning." 

"I'll remind you," John said stiffly. "That you didn't see it, either. What you're describing, all if it, it's hearsay."

He did not share that he, too, often considered Sherlock to be something of a kid on Christmas morning amongst the macabre.

"Hearsay, sure. From people I trust," she said, squaring her shoulders a little straighter. "From people who are very glad he's gone and gotten himself banished to the basement like the FBI's dirty little secret. People who are hoping that the next step is out the door for good." 

"I think we're done with this conversation," he said.

"John," she said, distressed. She put her hand on his arm. "You're right. I don't know him at all. I only know what I see, and what I see—it scares me. And if there's anyone in the world who doesn't deserve to be dragged down by an anchor like that, it's you."

He paused halfway out the door, turned back. Smiled, a painful thing. "You're wrong, you know." 

"Come back to headquarters with me," she urged, her voice low, gentle. "I'll talk to some people, see if I can get you officially assigned to my team for this—" 

"Sally," he said, shook his head. There was something painful stretching in his chest. He thought about the way she'd smirked at him in their academy classes, the way she'd nudged him gently in the side with her elbow when something happened that tickled their shared humor. The way she'd never said a word when he'd started, and almost immediately ended, that ill-advised _thing_ with Murray. 

He cleared his throat. 

"Agent Donovan," he corrected himself, carefully formal. His hand tightened, just once, then relaxed. "I appreciate—look, I do appreciate it. What you're trying to do. But I'm assigned to the X Files. My work is with Agent Holmes. And in spite of what you think of him, my assignment isn't—it's not a punishment. For me." 

She stared at him for a long moment, reading his face. Something closed off behind her eyes. She nodded, once. "Right. Well. Thank you for your assistance, Agent Watson. Best of luck with your assignment." 

She turned away from him, walked briskly back up the corridor. John watched her go, wondering how many doors he'd just slammed on his own career. 

_Pathological fear of commitment,_ Sherlock had suggested to him, earlier. 

A half-panicked laugh bubbled up from his chest, and he clamped a hand over his mouth, breathing hard. He'd just committed himself to the X Files, hadn't he? 

Sherlock came around the corner, eyeing him warily. 

"Come on," John said, shaking his head, taking another deep breath to steady himself. "Let's go." 

*

The basement office was empty when John arrived in the morning, although there were clear signs that Sherlock had been there at some point. 

A half-empty cup of coffee on the desk, still faintly warm to the touch. Files open, crime scene photographs scattered around. The smudged, poor-quality photocopy of that damned old fingerprint. 

He tapped his fingers on the sheet of paper for a moment, frowning down at it. Then he turned and went back out into the hallway.

He took the elevator up to the labs, made his way down the hall. He could hear Sherlock's voice, unmistakable, echoing down the corridor. 

He poked his head into the lab, where Sherlock and the lab technician, Agent Hooper, were both frowning down at a computer screen. 

"Ah," Sherlock said, without looking up. "John. Excellent, I was hoping you'd find us here." 

Hooper, who John had met a handful of times and had always considered briskly efficient, if slightly offbeat, lifted her head with a small startled sound. Her cheeks flushed red and she stepped quickly away from Sherlock. 

"Oh! Agent—um—" 

"Watson," John said, stepping further into the lab, eyeing her. 

"Watson, right. Sorry," she gave him an embarrassed smile, looked back at Sherlock, who seemed utterly absorbed with what he was looking at on the screen. The smile on her face faltered, just a bit.

"Comparing Jonathan Small's print to the one I lifted at the Usher scene," Sherlock said. 

"Agent Donovan said they already did that." 

"Yes, she did," Sherlock said. He lifted his head, gave John an odd, blank smile. "But I thought it might be worth a second look." 

"All right," John said, looking from Sherlock to Hooper, feeling as though he were missing something important. But it was Sherlock, of course, and he found that a lot of their conversations left him feeling as though he were missing something important. 

"Um," Hooper said, glancing at Sherlock, and _why_ did she seem so nervous? She'd never acted like this on the few occasions when John had interacted with her. "Small's print isn't—it's not a match. Obviously. You can see here—the size of the radial loops, the slope of the arches and whorls—um, it's nothing like the print that Agent Holmes found at the scene. But…" 

Sherlock glanced at her, then up at John, raised his brows. 

Hooper flushed again, cleared her throat. "Um. If you _stretch_ the print. It changes—obviously. And—" 

She leaned over, tapped something onto the keyboard. Small's print stretched vertically, narrowing, increasing in length. 

"I'll be damned," John said, looking over their shoulders at the screen. 

It was a match. A perfect match. 

"How can that be?" He glanced first to Hooper, and then to Sherlock. 

"No idea," Hooper said, gave a nervous little laugh. "That's your job, yeah?" 

Sherlock didn't respond, just went on staring at the stretched print. He blinked, once, twice, then looked up. "There was something else. A bit of insect wing that I recovered at the Usher scene." 

"Oh," Hooper said, looking a bit flustered at switching gears so quickly. "Right. It wasn't a wing, actually. It was a piece of an exoskeleton. Similar to a mayfly. They molt. See?" 

She clicked her mouse, pulled up a photograph. 

"They go through stages," she said, pointing at a photograph of insect larva. "Nymph, subimago and imago. They've got wings at the subimago and imago stages, which is, um, unique. Among insects, I mean." 

"And this bit of casing I found?" 

"Subimago," she said. "Almost certainly. I'm not an entomologist, of course, but I did some research. When you asked. And I called in an outside consult. They were. Um. Surprised by the size of the sample. Mayflies are considerably smaller. Typically. So that's what I meant when I said it was similar to a mayfly. But not exact."

Sherlock looked up at John, his face troubled. He looked back down at the screen. 

"Why would this be in a residential home?" 

"Infestation?" she shrugged. "Mayflies don't live long. Some people call them 'dayflies,' because they only live for about 24 hours. It's almost a romantic notion, you know? Living for just one day?" 

"So this one," he pointed back at the photograph she'd pulled up. "Molted into a fully matured form?" 

"Yeah," she said. "So. Um. Its lifecycle is definitely coming to an end." 

"Oh," Sherlock said, and leaned back in his chair. He tented his fingers under his chin, shut his eyes, breathed in deeply. Then he sprang to his feet. "I'll need you to find out everything you can on mayflies, Agent Hooper. Keep up the good work," he called distractedly over his shoulder, disappearing into the hallway. 

"Thanks, keep it up yourself!" Hooper chirped, although he'd already vanished. Her shoulders sagged, her face crumpling alarmingly. "Keep it up yourself," she repeated in a low voice, shaking her head. "Oh my God, I'm hopeless." 

John felt a stab of sympathy for her. Nervous, flustered, hopelessly smitten. 

Well, Sherlock did tend to have an effect on people. 

*

He caught up with Sherlock at the elevator, ducking through the doors just as they closed.

"This doesn't make any sense, Sherlock," John said. 

Sherlock looked at him, composed and unruffled as ever. There was a mild amusement in his voice as he spoke. "No, it doesn't." 

"What does that mean? The print?" 

"The only thing I'm certain of is that they let him go." 

John's phone rang as they exited the elevator in the basement. 

"It's Donovan," he said, glancing at the screen. 

"About to confirm something we already suspect, no doubt," Sherlock said. 

Dread sinking into the pit of his stomach, John answered. "Watson." 

"Agent Watson," she said, her voice brusque, professional, no hint of the familiar warmth and camaraderie they'd shared up until recently. "Small's done a runner." 

"He's what?" 

"Didn't show up for work this morning," she said. "His editor called it in. Baltimore PD sent a cruiser by his apartment, but it's a fake address—the building's vacant. Has been for years." 

John glanced up, locked eyes with Sherlock, who was watching him from across the room. _He's gone,_ he mouthed. 

Sherlock rolled his eyes. _Obviously,_ he mouthed back. 

"Christ," John said. "We had him. We _had_ him, and you let him go." 

"We were going by the book," she snapped. "You know as well as I do that we couldn't hold him, not when his story checked out. We had nothing on him." 

"I suppose his editor has conveniently changed his mind on the alibi, too," John said. 

"Oddly enough, he has," Donovan admitted. "Now he's saying that he knows Small was working late those nights, because he has emails to prove it, but he can't say definitively whether he was in the office or working remotely from a laptop. We're pulling security footage from the building." 

"You already know what you're going to find," John said. "One more victim, Sally, that's the pattern. One more, and then he disappears. Any luck with the blood banks?" 

"Dead end," she said, frustrated, breathing hard. "The Red Cross has no record of Stephen Bainbridge or Victoria Usher ever donating blood. Usher's family said she was phobic of needles, never would have done it." 

"There's a link somewhere, we're just not finding it," John said. "It's too much of a coincidence for all of the victims to share the same rare blood type." 

"Yeah, well. Call if you have any more great ideas," Donovan said, and hung up. 

"No such thing as coincidence," Sherlock said, watching John carefully. "The universe is rarely so lazy." 

"If he's not pulling them from a blood donor registry, then where? Where is he finding them?" 

"Maybe he's not," Sherlock said.

John frowned. "What?"

"Maybe he's not finding them on a list. What's the one thing confirmed by all of the victims' friends and family? That the victim was excited about having met someone new. _Met_ someone new, as in actually, physically, met them. Our killer doesn't have a social media presence. There were no emails, no online communication at all." 

"So he just… happened to bump into four people with the same blood type?" 

"Something like that," Sherlock said. "What if he could smell it on them?" 

John shut his eyes. "Oh, God." 

"Just bear with me," Sherlock said. "Please." 

John opened his eyes, waved his hand to indicate Sherlock should continue.

"Five murders every thirty years." 

"Assuming it's the same person, Sherlock, which is a pretty huge assumption to make based on one poorly lifted print and some missing livers." 

"Mayflies," Sherlock said.

"What?"

"Mayflies. There's something to that. Mayflies. A short lifecycle. They're essentially born, mate, lay eggs and die." 

John flinched. "You think he's laying eggs?" 

"What? No!" Sherlock scowled at him. But what if he is in the midst of—of molting. And the end of his lifecycle he. Either dies, or—or goes into hibernation, or—" 

"Sherlock, even if you were trying to suggest that Jonathan Small is somehow—erm—turning into a fly, flies don't hibernate. They don't fall asleep for thirty years and wake up to eat livers." 

"No," Sherlock said. "But some insects do. Cicadas have cycles that can last for years, decades, even." 

"Yeah but—" John laughed, feeling helpless, adrift. "Cicada cycles owe to hatching and development, not because it's the same cicada hibernating and then showing up every seventeen years or so." 

"So maybe he is laying eggs, then. Maybe this is his life cycle—every thirty years. He hatches, molts, takes in sustenance—do you have any idea how nutrient-dense a liver is?—reproduces and dies. Thirty years later, the cycle starts anew." 

"Sherlock, 'out there' doesn't even begin to—" 

"Look," Sherlock said, and there was something rough in his voice, something determined. "Will you set aside your disbelief, just for now? We're both in agreement that we have to find him, and we're running out of time in which to do so. If he kills someone else, he'll disappear underground and the next time we get a chance it'll be thirty years from now, and you'll—you'll be head of the Bureau by then, so." 

John stared at him. 

Sherlock shifted under his gaze, clearly not liking it when he himself was the subject of scrutiny. 

"Where do you suggest we look?" 

"His apartment, for starters." 

"Baltimore PD went by already. It's a fake address. Building is condemned." 

"Not a bad place to hide a nest, then, is it?" 

John had to admit, sometimes, Sherlock made a good point.

*

The ramshackle brick building that stood at 66 Exeter Street had clearly seen better days. The sidewalk in front was cracked, weed-choked, dirty. The windows were boarded up, wooden planks rotten and broken in places. A no trespassing notice was posted on the entrance. 

"Lovely place," John said, eyeing it. "Do you suppose they have any vacancies?" 

Sherlock smiled, made a small humming sound in response. "He gave his listing as Unit 103." 

"Ground floor," John said. 

The air inside was stale, musty, foul. They picked their way carefully down a narrow hallway, across rotted floorboards.

"Here," Sherlock said, pausing in front of a door. 

They pushed in, guns drawn. 

The room was tiny, decrepit, empty. Yellowed wallpaper had peeled away from the walls and fell in great, drooping folds. A moldy, rat-gnawed mattress had been propped up against the far wall. 

"Nothing here," John said.

Sherlock made an impatient sound, holstered his weapon. 

"I can't believe I'm saying this," John said, lifting his eyes up and staring at the ceiling. "But you did mention cicadas, earlier. Underground. Does the building have a basement?"

"Oh," Sherlock breathed. "Of _course._ " 

He strode across the room, pulled the mattress away from the wall. It flopped over onto the ground, kicking up a wave of foul-smelling dust. 

There was a hole cut in the wall, just wide enough for a man to slip through. It yawned, black and empty.

"Christ," John said. He clicked his flashlight on, peered into the hole. He followed the path of light down through rotted boards, dust motes dancing in the beam. There was a rickety ladder nailed against the inner wall. 

"We'll have to climb down," Sherlock said, nudging him out of the way, grasping the ladder. 

"Yeah," John said. "How did I know you were going to say that?"

*

It was warm, for a cellar. Warmer than it should have been. There was an odd smell in the air, acidic, sharp. John covered his mouth with his forearm, wrinkled his nose. 

A glance at Sherlock revealed him to be similarly affected, his face scrunched up in distaste. 

"There," John said, as his flashlight beam swept across something odd. He crept closer to investigate. 

Wooden support beams on the far wall had been cut, hollowed out, leaving a rounded space. There was some sort of—some sort of mold or growth, climbing up in between the hollows, clinging to the wall. 

"What is that?" John asked quietly, frowning at it. Upon closer inspection, it did not appear to be like any mold or deterioration he'd ever seen. And it was almost certainly the source of the smell, which was beginning to make his eyes water. 

"Some kind of nest," Sherlock said, his voice half-breathless with disgust or wonder or something in between. He stretched out one long finger, prodded at the substance, which yielded with a faintly sticky, squelching sound. He grimaced, pulled back. Yellow goo clung to the edge of his finger. 

"Sherlock," John said, wincing, his mind finally connecting the smell with what was directly in front of him. "Bile. That's bile. You just put your fingers in bile." 

Sherlock's face went very carefully blank. "Oh," he said, and he twitched his hand, flicking the substance away. He looked down at his own fingers like they'd betrayed him. 

"He's not here now," John said, holding his breath as he leaned over to peer further into the nest. There was a hole, worn smooth, wet with yellow bile, just big enough for a man to slip through. The sides, built up, stinking and dripping, looked as though they been formed out of leaves and bits of wadded up newspaper. His eyes caught on the familiar _Sun_ logo. 

"He'll have to come back," Sherlock said. "It's his nest. He'll be back." 

"After he's killed," John said. "That's his life cycle, right? Five mates. Five livers. Then back here to—to hibernate, or nest or, or whatever it is that he does." 

Bile, he thought. Bile was produced by the liver. It was like he was… storing up.

"Why O-negative?" Sherlock asked.

John looked back at the nest, breathed out through his nose, tried to clear away the smell. It lingered, heavy in his nostrils. "Um. Type O blood is considered a universal donor. Particularly O-negative, because it doesn't contain the Rh antigen. Anyone can receive it." 

"But he's not transfusing blood, he's not transplanting organs," Sherlock said. "Why does it _matter?_ "

John shook his head, his eyes still watering from the smell. He gagged, his throat working. "Sherlock. Can we speculate about this somewhere else? _Anywhere_ else?" 

They went up the ladder and through the wall, back into the empty little apartment. The stale air tasted sweet and fresh compared to the basement. 

"O blood types," John said, leaning against the wall, taking a deep breath. "They tend to be prone to ulcers. Higher stomach acid levels. Acid reflux disorders. Sometimes goes hand-in-hand with bile reflux. I, uh, have to watch my diet sometimes." 

"The livers he's eating," Sherlock said, his voice slow, speculative, his eyes distant and unfocused. Thinking. Deep in his own mind. "What if he's not just digesting them—but they're part of some larger metabolic process? I've encountered things, John, in my work—anomalies. Mutations. It could explain this. If he's-- _using_ the livers, somehow, consuming them, producing bile to insulate his nest—sourcing a liver from the wrong blood type could akin to a person receiving a bad transfusion. His own cells might turn against him." 

John pressed a hand against his forehead. Sighed. 

_A lifetime of running away when things get tough,_ he thought. _And the day I decide to commit to something, it turns out to be_ this.

"Sherlock. Please understand that I am. I am _trying_ here. But what you're suggesting—" 

"We have to find him," Sherlock said, straightening up. "Regardless. Even if none of this theorizing is correct and I'm as crazy as your friend Donovan seems to think." A flash of teeth, a dark, humorless smile. "He's not making any effort to keep up his alibi. His identity. It's likely he won't stick to his pattern, either, not with only one victim to go. He's going to make a move for the first O-negative person he encounters, and then he's going to come back here for his nest." 

John's phone rang. 

He fumbled for it, conscious of Sherlock's eyes on him.

"We've got a break-in at the Red Cross. Someone tried to access donor lists," Donovan said. "It's him. Christ, John, you were right. We've got a team contacting all of the O-negative donors whose information may have been compromised. I could use your help, if you're interested." 

John shut his eyes. They could still catch him. They could still find him before he returned to his nest, before he hurt anyone else. 

"Agent Holmes and I are in the Exeter Street apartment," he said.

"What? The building's condemned. No one lives there." 

"He does," John said. "Look, it's—hard to explain. He's got a tunnel, into the basement. There's a sort of nest." 

"A _nest?_ " There was incredulity in her voice. As, he supposed, there should be. 

"We could use a team on the building, if you can spare them." 

"John," she said, her voice heavy, disappointed. 

He looked helplessly at Sherlock, who stared implacably back at him. 

"Where are you now?" he asked, looking away. 

"Mount Hope," she said. "The Red Cross. We need all hands on deck, John, this is important." 

He hung up, looked back at Sherlock. 

"She's convinced you that your time would be better served elsewhere," Sherlock said. His voice was very carefully neutral. 

John shook his head, slipped his phone back into his pocket. "Someone broke into the Red Cross donation center. They accessed lists, Sherlock, donor information. It's him. It has to be. If we can reach those people in time—" 

Sherlock frowned. "Why would you take a chance chasing him all over Baltimore? He's coming back here. We _know_ that." 

"Because it might save a life, Sherlock," John said. "It—I have to go." 

Sherlock waved a dismissive hand, no longer looking at him. 

"Sherlock." 

"I'll call. If anything seems amiss," Sherlock said. He did not quite make eye contact.

John hesitated a moment longer, then took off running down the hall.

*

He could not quite miss the way that Donovan's eyes slid past him, quickly checking to see if Sherlock was on his heels as he shoved through the entrance at the Red Cross. Her face softened slightly when she saw he was alone, and he felt angry at himself for resenting her for it. 

"Here," she said, no preamble, all-business. She handed him a list of printed names. "We've got Baltimore PD involved too. We're establishing telephone contact first, and if we can't reach them, we're sending a car." 

"Right," John said, looking down the list of names. 

"There's a room back there," she said, pointing over her shoulder, attention half on a police sergeant coming through the doors. "You can set up in there."

John took his list, pushed through the doors, found himself in a tiny break room. He looked down at his phone, checking first for any texts from Sherlock. 

Nothing. 

"All right," he said, looking back at his list. He started to dial. 

*

Sherlock sat, motionless, in a tiny, crumbling apartment. He listened to mice in the walls, faint squeaking and rustling. The chirp of a cricket in the far corner. The rattle of a broken windowpane. Shadows played along the floor as the sun marched across the sky, began its descent. 

The hole in the wall gaped, dark, ominous. The sharp odor of bile wafted out, diluted, still very much present. 

He wanted to wash his hands. He'd shaken the substance off of his fingers, wiped them on his trousers, but still felt dirty, uncomfortable, sticky. 

John thought he could stop Small from taking another victim. John thought he could save a life. 

Sherlock was waiting in the dark, gun drawn, his own plan entirely contingent on John's failure. It was discomfiting, thinking of it that way. 

Small would take another victim, and he would return to his nest. Sherlock would be ready when he did. He was certain of these facts. The pool of potential victims, even given the rarity of his preferred blood type, was large enough that any attempt to head him off was almost certain to fail. 

Better to stick with the known quantity. 

Until then, little to do but sit in the dark and speculate on the kind of odd physiology that would lead Small to devour livers, to construct a nest out of newspaper and bile, that would cause him to leave insect casings behind, that would warp his fingerprints just enough to render them unrecognizable. 

He'd already drawn more conclusions than he was fully comfortable with.

John. Heroic John. Well-meaning John. John, who felt compelled to heal, to protect. 

John, who had a tendency to run away from things. John, who was currently surrounded by (relatively) competent agents, agents doing legitimate work preventing and solving violent crimes. John, who had a history with Donovan, a curious history, one that could almost certainly blossom into a successful working relationship if nothing more. 

It was a curious thing to speculate on, John's relationship to Donovan. They'd liked each other, once, and the affection remained. He could see it, in the way they maintained professional distance and yet seemed to verge on the familiar, as if it wouldn't take much to set them down a path of nostalgic fondness. 

It was _hateful._

But no romantic connection. He'd deduced that much, back when John had first met her for lunch. He'd been interested, and she had not. They'd known each other in the academy, had clearly got on well, so why had he not pursued something then? 

Oh, he thought. _Oh._

There had been someone else. Someone else that John had run away from. Perhaps the very someone that he'd pissed off enough to draw Freak babysitting duty. 

He pursed his lips, considered it. He could speculate further, but he didn't care to. The very thought made him uncomfortable, oddly cold and shivery. 

John was out there, trying to save the life. Making good impressions on all the right people. 

Small would be coming back. Back for his nest.

He'd broken into a blood bank, accessed a donor list. It was efficient, Sherlock supposed, but strange. Small had seemed the type to latch onto his victims in person. Perhaps he chose those who smelled the most appetizing to him. 

A brief memory flitted through his mind, Small's eyes gleaming hungry in the moonlight, looking at John while Sherlock slapped cuffs on narrow wrists.

John, who had stood in this very room and said _I have to watch my diet sometimes_ when talking about type O-bloods and acid reflux. 

Ice spread through his veins, flushing and flooding through him with a numb dull horror. He did not move for a moment, near-paralyzed with it, his eyes wide, unblinking. 

Then he shoved roughly up from where he sat, bolted for the door. 

*

John's phone beeped an incoming call as he was in the midst of speaking with a panicked woman on the other line. He pulled the phone away from his ear and fought off a flare of panic when he saw Sherlock's name. 

It was all too easy to imagine Sherlock, alone in that horrid building, overwhelmed, just another mangled victim in a pool of blood. 

"Ma'am," he said, relieved that his voice was still calm, steady. "Please. Just make sure your doors and windows are locked. Don't allow entry to anyone you don't know. Take reasonable precautions." 

He hung up, looked down. Sherlock had not left a message. 

He started to dial him back. 

Something wet dribbled down from the ceiling, spattering warm and thick against his wrist. He jerked his hand away, looked up. 

The ceiling tile over his head had gone soft, sodden with yellow goo, smelling sharp and acidic. Bile. 

"Christ," John said, dropping his phone, reaching for his gun just as the tile over his head gave way and a heavy figure crashed down into him. 

His head cracked against the tile floor and he saw stars. His gun skittered across the floor, bouncing against a table leg. Jonathan Small, surprisingly strong for his small stature, got a hold of his wrists, grip firm and slightly slimy. He opened his mouth, a chittering sound emerging from somewhere deep in his throat. 

He was _changing_ , John realized with a rush of horror. He could feel the man's fingers lengthening against his, his skin loose and sloughing backwards, a mere shell over something not quite human. 

There was a commotion somewhere beyond the door, Sally, most likely, pounding against it. He hadn't locked it, had he? What—

Small jerked him up from the ground and slammed him back down, still chittering, one horrible long fingered hand scrabbling up under his shirt at the bare skin of his belly. He'd seen the crime scene photos, he knew what was coming. 

His head cracked against the tile again and his consciousness bled to a muted gray, leaving him disoriented and confused and terrified, hands pushing weakly against Small. 

Jesus. He'd been to war, for God's sake. He'd been shot. Was he really going to die at the hands of some kind of grotesque human fly?

There was a pounding behind him, the door again, and then it burst open, light flooding in. 

Small shrieked. 

Gunfire. Two shots, no hesitation. The weight was gone from his chest and legs as Small tumbled backwards, limp and loose-limbed and not entirely human against the tile floor. 

"John." 

Sherlock's voice, somehow, Sherlock's face blurring into focus before his eyes. 

"What—" Donovan was saying, looking down at Small, her face slack with shock. He might have laughed had his head not hurt quite so badly. 

"Are you all right?" Sherlock asked him, his face close enough that his breath ghosted against John's cheeks in warm puffs, his voice low and warm, concerned. His hands were on John's face, turning his head gently, feeling along his skull for injuries, long fingers, long _human_ fingers, nothing like Small's. 

John managed a nod, squinted to keep Sherlock in focus. "Concussion, probably. Hit my head." His tongue felt cottony and dry in his mouth. "How—"

"He didn't want to pick his victim from a list," Sherlock murmured. "He found them in person. He saw you, the night we arrested him." 

His eyes had gleamed yellow. Bile-yellow, unnatural in the moonlight. Just for an instant. He'd been unsettled by it, had brushed it off. 

"I didn't run away," John said, tired, woozy, distantly aware of the approaching sirens. An ambulance, most likely. Probably for the best. He should be checked out. "You should know that. My work is. With you, now. Yeah?" 

There was a strange look on Sherlock's face, oddly choked. He nodded. Did not speak. 

"Good," John said, as the EMTs burst in, nudging Sherlock aside so they could check him. "Good."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **[I Want to Believe](https://khorazir.tumblr.com/post/157373310748/i-want-to-believe-and-hips-before-hands) ** by the incredible Khorazir ([lineart here](https://khorazir.tumblr.com/post/157207315428/i-want-to-believelineart-of-the-second))
> 
>  *
> 
> As always, feel free to come say hi on [Tumblr](http://www.discordantwords.tumblr.com)


	5. Eloquent Dust (Part 1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time to delve back into some mythology. ::cracks knuckles::
> 
> Just a note, this chapter contains references to feelings of guilt and shame surrounding a past child abduction.

*

Time passed. 

Spring melted into summer. They tracked a freight truck through three states because it was rumored to be transporting an extraterrestrial. They found the truck, but no sign of any otherworldly visitors. Much as John had expected.

Summer withered into fall. They encountered an identical set of murderous eight-year-old girls who may have been the result of a rogue cloning experiment. Sherlock got them mixed up in an ugly turf war between a camp of loggers and a camp of eco-terrorists, a turf war that was abruptly and messily curtailed by the arrival of flesh-eating insects. John now had the unpleasant and unwanted knowledge of precisely what it felt like to be cocooned. 

Fall slid into winter. They spent a week in a research outpost in Alaska with a group of scientists, discovered a paranoia-inducing parasite and, predictably, reacted with mounting paranoia. John took a week off after that, spent a miserable and cheerless Christmas with Harry. Sherlock had texted relentlessly, bored, seeking distraction. John thought it might have been a relief for both of them when he returned to work.

Winter thawed into spring, gray skies, damp, rainy chill and fog. The promise of warmer days, just over the horizon. 

The tentative rhythm that had developed strengthened into a comfortable tide, an ebb and flow of daily routine, paperwork and monsters, cheap motels and airline travel, rental cars and long nights spent pondering the nature of reality and truth. 

Sherlock was utterly, completely batshit insane. 

And John utterly, completely loved his job. 

He was content in a way he'd never quite managed, before. Content in a way he could never have anticipated, as said contentment came hand-in-hand with arguments that required him to declare things like:

"No, I don't think it's likely that the government has rigged televisions to secretly mind-control civilians" and

"The idea that an advanced alien race capable of crossing light-years worth of distance to get here would come all this way just to cut up a bunch of cows or mow fancy circles in some cornfields is beyond ridiculous" or

"While six people struck by lightning in one town _is_ strange, I don't see how you could immediately jump to the conclusion that there's someone controlling it" or even

"I don't care if you call them werewolves or lycanthropes, Sherlock, either way they're _still_ not real." 

And if, after the last one, he wound up dodging something large and hairy and yet disturbingly human, well… there was a scientific explanation for it. Surely. 

The point was, he was happy. He was happy in a way he never could have imagined. He was helping people. He was solving (admittedly weird) crimes, saving lives. Keeping Sherlock out of trouble. Or, at least, keeping him out of enough trouble to ensure that he still had a job. 

He was happy.

So he supposed he shouldn't have been surprised when it all went to hell.

*

"I can't quite believe that Lestrade thought this was worth sending us out for," John muttered, shifting from one foot to another under a dreary Pennsylvania drizzle. 

They'd been briefed on the case early that morning, sitting in uncomfortable chairs in front of Lestrade's desk.

Sherlock had been piqued by the summons—he'd spent the morning jabbering on excitedly about some blog post tracking an uptick in UFO activity, culminating in reports of a crash landing somewhere in West Virginia earlier in the week. More than once, he'd dropped unsubtle hints about leaving the office and driving out to the supposed crash site. 

Instead, they'd been called up to AD Lestrade's office. Post haste. 

While Assistant Director Lestrade seemed like a nice person, being called into his office often left John with the unshakable sensation of being called in front of the principal at school, nervous and guilty. Sherlock, who far more often was the cause of whatever they should have felt nervous or guilty about, never seemed to display signs of either. 

Lestrade's office always smelled faintly of cigarettes. It left John ill at ease, his eyes sliding to the corners, half expecting to glimpse a silent man in an expensive suit. 

Sometimes he was there. A silent specter, watching with those cold, assessing eyes. A curl of smoke rising up towards the ceiling. 

Lestrade typically ignored him. 

John and Sherlock followed suit. 

"I want you both in Philadelphia," Lestrade had said, leaning back in his chair and studying both of them. "There's a research clinic that's been receiving threats. Intel says it may be genuine." 

Sherlock had stiffened up, scowling. He'd still had his heart set on the UFOs, John knew. "Not our area." 

"Yeah, well, in the last three days there have been fires at two similar clinics—one in Ohio, one in Virginia. Two doctors and a nurse are dead." Lestrade straightened the paperwork on his desk, frowned. "And there's a woman, married to one of the research docs at the Philadelphia facility. She phoned in a tip, claiming her husband is three people." 

Sherlock's mouth, which had been open to continue protesting, clicked shut. John had watched him out of the corner of his eye, could almost _see_ the wheels begin turning in his mind. 

"She's terrified. Has called every law enforcement agency she can think of. Given the nature of the threats against the facility and the very real possibility of internal sabotage, someone up high thought it might be worth checking in to. It landed in my lap, so now I'm giving it to you." 

"Three people," Sherlock said. "Why would she think that?" 

"Your job to find out," Lestrade said. He'd glanced down at his watch. "Daylight's wasting, agents." 

John had spent some time researching the clinic on his phone while Sherlock drove. 

"Hm," he'd said, at one point, as they inched through traffic, windshield wipers squeaking. "A lot of controversy around this place. Stem cell research. Long history of threats being made against the clinic and workers there." 

"Three people," Sherlock had muttered. "Why would she think her husband is three people?" 

He'd looked up from his phone, shrugged. "Triplets? Having a laugh?" 

Sherlock blinked in an exaggerated manner, gave him a disgusted look. "No." 

"Why not?" 

"First of all, identical triplets are rare. Occurs approximately once in half a million births. Second of all—she _married_ the man. She'd be aware of any siblings." 

"Could be secret siblings." 

"No." 

"They could have been planning the entire thing for a while," John had said, unable to help himself, struggling to keep from smirking in the face of Sherlock's growing ire. 

"Planning _what?_ A tedious and mundane deception wherein they trade off whose turn it is to take out the trash?" 

"What, you never thought about it? Having a twin, or a clone or something?" John blinked at Sherlock, holding his face very steady. "I used to imagine it as a kid all the time—having another me that I could send off to school so I could stay home and have the house to myself." 

Sherlock had stopped watching the road to gape at him, truly gape, his mouth hanging open. "If you're trying to say that our good doctor here was so remarkably prescient as to hide the existence of his identical siblings just for the express purpose of trading off on occasional evenings—" 

"God," John said, and finally let the laughter escape, bubbling up from his chest in a merry little giggle. He tipped his head back, grinned. "It is very easy to wind you up, if one knows what they're doing." 

"And I suppose you claim to know what you're doing, then?" Sherlock had looked back at the road, lips pursed, chin tucked. Haughty. Offended. 

"Certainly appears that way." 

The edge of Sherlock's lip twitched, a surefire sign that he was nowhere near as offended as he was attempting to appear. 

By the time they'd arrived at the home of Victor and Elise Hatherley, just outside Philadelphia, John was forced to admit that he had absolutely no idea why they'd been given the case. 

There were real, genuine threats of violence against the clinic where Dr. Hatherley worked. And if there were concerns about Hatherley's behavior, then he certainly should be investigated. 

But why them, in particular? 

He thought again about the faint cigarette odor in Lestrade's office. It hung in the air, woven in to the fabric of the seat cushions, the window treatments, the lampshades. The smell seemed almost an extension of the silent man himself, hovering, persistently present, forever out of reach. 

It put him on edge. Made him uncomfortable. Nervous. Paranoid. 

But, frankly, he'd spent more than a year working with Sherlock. At this point, everything made him paranoid. 

"There's more here than we're being told," Sherlock said, looking at him from under his umbrella. He reached out with one gloved hand, pressed the doorbell. 

"Yeah, isn't there always?" John grumbled as the door creaked open. 

*

Elise Hatherley had a strong handshake and a nervous, hovering demeanor. Her face was pinched, strained, and she seemed oddly jumpy, even in her own home, as she showed them to the living room. 

John, after politely declining her offer of tea or coffee, sat on the edge of the sofa and took out his notepad. Next to him, Sherlock tipped his head, his eyes scanning slowly around the room, taking it all in. 

"I'm glad you're here," she said, wringing her hands together. "I was beginning to think that no one would ever take me seriously."

John nodded, schooled his in what he hoped was a sympathetic expression. 

Sherlock, for his part, was not acting as if this entire thing was an enormous waste of time, which was mildly surprising in and of itself. 

"Mrs. Hatherley—" John began.

"Elise," she said, flashing a warm smile. There was a brief flicker of something in her face, a glimmer of personality, buried and crushed under stress. "Please." 

He did not have to have Sherlock's remarkable skills to know that something was very, very wrong. 

"Elise," he said. Nodded. "You've been having concerns about your husband's behavior?" 

"It's not my husband," she said. 

Sherlock shifted in his seat, but did not speak. John glanced at him, frowned. 

"I know that it sounds crazy," Elise continued. "I _know_ that it does. But you have to believe me. I know my husband. My husband is fine—he's—he's as fine as he's ever been. But the man that comes home to me some nights is not the man I married." 

John cleared his throat, shot Sherlock another surreptitious glance. He seemed interested, intent. 

"How is he different?" John asked, finally. 

"Um," Elise said. She smiled, a shy, sad smile, looked down. Her eyes had filled with tears. "It's strange. He and I, we—we have little jokes. Nothing that would be funny to anyone else, just little—little private things we'll smile about from time to time. But some nights, he comes home, and he has no idea what I'm talking about. And I don't mean that he's forgotten, I mean it's like he's a complete stranger. He moves around the house like he's unfamiliar with it, like he's unfamiliar with me."

"Three people," Sherlock said. "What makes you so sure it's three distinct people?"

"Oh," she said. "Well. Vic, he's—he's always been a bit of a workaholic, you know, but he—he has things that he cares about outside of work. He loves baseball. The Phillies. Even when he can't sit down to watch a game, he's craning his neck to check the score. But there are some days where he—he barely even seems to understand—" she sniffed, hard, and wiped at her eyes. "It's not just that he's too busy, or not interested. It's like he doesn't realize that it ever mattered to him at all. And then—there's the other one. That one is worse. He'll—he pretends to care. He pretends, because I think he's _trying_ to seem all right, but he's not. It's false and wrong and—" 

"Let me get this straight," John said, looking down at the notes he'd taken, and then back up at her tearful, stricken face. "You believe that your husband is three people based on his varying reactions to a sports team?"

"I know it sounds crazy—" she began again. 

"Elise," Sherlock cut in, all smiles and deep, sympathetic voice. "Would you mind terribly if I took you up on that tea offer after all? I seem to be a bit parched." 

"Oh," she said, derailed from whatever she'd been about to say. She blinked, seemed to resettle herself. "Of course. Yes, of course, just—excuse me a moment." 

"Sherlock, what—" John started, as she left the room in a rush. 

"There's something going on here," Sherlock whispered.

"Yes, there is," John said. "Either she's having us on, or her husband is suffering from some kind of—early onset dementia, or possibly even a dissociative identity disorder—" 

"No," Sherlock said. "Look around, John, don't you see?" 

John turned away, gave a pointed glance around the room. It was a perfectly ordinary living room, as far as he could see. Sofa. Chairs. Coffee table. A modestly sized television. 

He returned his attention to Sherlock, gave an exaggerated shrug. Sherlock rolled his eyes, made an impatient noise. 

"The _pictures_ , John. Family photographs. There aren't any." 

It was immediately apparent once he'd mentioned it. The room was devoid of photographs. Tasteful, bland art adorned the walls. There were knick-knacks on the shelves, some personal. A stack of birthday cards on the mantel. 

But not a single photo. No wedding photo. No smiling family members. Nothing. 

"What does it mean?" John asked, keeping his voice low.

Sherlock grinned. "I've absolutely no idea." 

John's phone buzzed. He frowned, looked down at the screen. "It's Lestrade." 

Sherlock shrugged. "I usually ignore his calls."

John rolled his eyes, moved a few paces away, phone to his ear. "Sir?" 

"Is Agent Holmes with you?" Lestrade sounded annoyed, moreso than usual. 

"Yeah, he's—he's here. He's right here. We're in Pennsylvania, like you asked."

"I've been trying to get in touch with him." 

John looked back at Sherlock, who gave him a suspiciously innocent look.

"He must, ah, he must have his phone on silent. I'll put him on." 

He handed the phone over to Sherlock, who took it with an exaggerated eye roll. "We haven't been in Pennsylvania long enough to cause any trouble, Lestrade, and if this is about the red light I ran, I can assure you it was for a very good reason—" the mischievous expression abruptly dropped from his face, as if someone had flipped a switch. 

It set something cold in the pit of John's stomach. He glanced back towards the kitchen, where Elise Hatherley was still rustling around in her cabinets. 

"No," Sherlock said, and his voice was flat. Mild, almost, but with something sharp and prickly at the edges. "I typically ignore her calls too." 

John watched him, worry creeping in. There was a tension to the set of his shoulders, to the way he held himself. His hand was very tight around the phone. He paced as he listened, turning this way and that, eyes not quite alighting on anything in the room. 

"Right," Sherlock said, and hung up. He started to put the phone in his own pocket, caught himself, handed it back to John. It was warm in the palm of his hand. 

"Everything all right?"

Sherlock looked at him, his face terrifyingly blank. "I have to go. Family emergency." 

"Oh," John said, reaching out, halfway to putting his hand on Sherlock's arm. "All right, we'll—"

"No," Sherlock said, brusque, clipped. "You stay. Finish up with Elise Hatherley. Find out anything you can about her husband, about the clinic. I'll—" he faltered, blinking, then shook his head, went out the door. 

"Sherlock!" 

Sherlock did not glance back, did not speak, did not acknowledge John in any way. The car kicked up loose stones and bits of gravel as he pulled out of the driveway. 

John watched him go, the dread that had settled into the pit of his stomach seeping in further, stretching cold tendrils of worry through his veins. 

"Oh," Elise Hatherley said from behind him. "Is everything all right?"

"Yes," John said, turning away from the door, composing himself. "Yes, Agent Holmes was just—just called away on another matter. I have a few more questions, if you don't mind. And—" he hesitated, glancing back towards the door. "Could I have the number for a cab?" 

*

The drive had not done anything to settle Sherlock's nerves. 

The fact that he even _had_ nerves that required settling was inconvenient. An unexpected development.

He had, for the past many years, held interactions with his parents to the absolute bare minimum. It had been some time since he'd had cause to drive up to his mother's home in Connecticut. 

The house itself was overlarge, ostentatious. He idled at the curb, looking up at it. 

_He was only eight. You should have been_ watching _him._

His mother had not spoken those words to him within the walls of this house. There were no bad memories here, nothing at all to shy away from. He had never lived here, had only ever darkened the doorway as a guest. 

And yet. 

He felt oddly like a child, idling in his car, looking up at the big house with its privacy hedges and manicured lawn. Like something of a prodigal son, returned home after many years away. Except—this place had never actually _been_ his home. His parents had divorced while he was overseas, happily losing himself both in his Oxford courses and an impressive variety of illicit substances. 

His mother had bought the house in Greenwich. His father had gone back north to Martha's Vineyard, back to the place where everything had shaken itself apart, and had, presumably, set about drowning himself in drink or maudlin memories, whichever came first. 

All at once, the air in the car was thick with the scent of salt and sand. He had spent his childhood on the beaches, wind combing his hair with wild fingers. Sherrinford at his heels, always, always. 

It was choking, stifling, and he tipped his head back against the headrest and struggled to breathe. His mind palace did not typically misfire in such a way. 

He could, at will, close his eyes and drop himself onto a beach in Martha's Vineyard. If he chose. Which he didn't. He was alarmed at the present reality of his own brain simply deciding to thrust him there without his input. 

They had left that place, left the big rambling house and the beaches and the wild sea. They had left it as a diminished family of three, stunned and quaking and all so angry and tight-lipped and afraid.

 _You should have been_ watching _him._

He should have. He had been. He'd been watching and then they'd argued and then Sherrinford had been gone. Just like that. 

And the neighbors—well. Everyone liked a good piece of gossip, didn't they? It was predictable. Tedious. Pointless to chase his own thoughts through such well-worn and beaten paths. 

_Mark my words, they'll find out it was the brother._

_Not right, that Holmes boy. Something wrong with him._

_Of_ course _they know what happened. They're covering for him. They've only got the one son left now, you know._

Irrelevant. Pointless. Utterly unnecessary. They had left that place. They had packed up their things and moved to Maryland, so his mother could be closer to her State Department job. 

She'd disappeared into her work, he recalled. Was barely ever home. After. 

Well. He supposed, in retrospect, he couldn't really blame her. 

He couldn't sit in the car prevaricating any longer. His mother had attempted to reach him by phone, and, failing that, had gone ahead and contacted the FBI. She was not prone to histrionics or dramatics. If she declared a family emergency, it was likely to be so. 

He looked down at his phone, noted a text message from John. 

**All ok?**

He stared at it for a moment. Tiny words on a tiny screen. Reaching out. Caring, in some strange and unforeseen way. 

_You should have been_ watching _him._

He slipped the phone back in his pocket without responding. When he stepped out of the car and into the chilly Connecticut air, he drew his coat closer around him. 

*

The motel walls were a faded beige. 

It was not the worst motel room he'd stayed in. It was clean. The sheets were fresh. The duvet was not too terribly stained. 

After finishing up with Elise Hatherley, he'd taken a cab to a rental car agency, gone about getting his transportation situation sorted out. Then he'd phoned the Philadelphia FBI field office, gotten in touch with the lead domestic terrorism agent working the case. 

"Yeah, she called us," Agent Gregson had told him. "Her story's strange, I'll give you that. We've got eyes on the husband, but no one can seem to dig up anything unsavory on him. He's got no suspicious ties, no sympathetic leanings towards radical organizations. Coworkers seem to like him, say he's very dedicated to his work. We're really focused more on external threats, especially coming on the heels of the bombings in Virginia and Ohio." 

"Right," John said. "I'm going to pop in at the clinic tomorrow, talk to a few folks."

"It's all yours," Gregson had said. 

John had settled onto the bed, spreading out his notes to review. He'd left the television on, droning quietly across the room, a news program on as background noise. 

Elise Hatherley had not been able to offer up anything truly concrete regarding the odd behavior of her husband, or her bizarre assertion that he was more than one person. Just that he sometimes liked baseball and sometimes didn't, that he was occasionally affectionate and occasionally aloof. That he sometimes seemed ill at ease in his own home. That, at times, he seemed to make efforts to fake affection. 

When John asked if she'd taken photographs of her husband in his various personas, so that he might compare, she'd recoiled. 

"Oh," she'd said, flustered, shaking her head. "I forget that people who don't know him don't—well. He doesn't like to be photographed. Ever. It's the one thing that never changes with him. We don't even have any wedding photos." 

He'd been unsure of what to suggest, other than to encourage the man to make an appointment with a doctor. 

He'd noted the possibility that the recent behavior shift coincided with an intent to carry out some kind of attack on the clinic where he worked. He planned to dig further into that in the morning when he paid a visit to the clinic itself. 

He sighed, shut his notepad, rolled his neck on his shoulders. Looked down at his phone, halfheartedly hoping for a response from Sherlock. It remained frustratingly silent. 

He tried not to dwell on the expression that had come over Sherlock's face before he'd left the Hatherley house, that terrible stony blankness. 

It was strange, he thought. Sitting in a motel reviewing his notes alone. More often than not Sherlock would have set up camp at one of the little desks, talking to himself, thinking, stealing bits of John's dinner. Occasionally pausing to insult at whatever John had on the television. 

It was quiet, without him. The long night stretched out in front of him, leaving him feeling oddly bereft. 

He looked down at his phone again, even though it hadn't buzzed or lit up or done anything to make him think there might be a message waiting for him. 

As expected, there was nothing there. He sighed, typed out another message.

 **Hope you're all right. Let me know if there's anything you need.**

Sherlock was probably looking at them, at his boring meaningless little platitudes, and dismissing them as not worth responding to. 

He was restless, uncomfortable. He stood up from the bed, stretched, paced around the room, feeling a bit like a caged lion at the zoo. 

He picked up the remote, upped the volume on the television, stood half-watching the news. There was adrenaline coursing through his veins, ramping him up where he wanted to be settling down. He was edgy, anxious. He wanted to hear from Sherlock, wanted confirmation that he was, at least, all right. 

He didn't know much about Sherlock's family. He'd mentioned them once, at the motel that night in Bellefleur. Never again. 

He'd been a bit freer on the subject of his brother, that forever-young grinning face in the photograph that graced his desk. But although he _could_ be prodded into discussing the subject, he rarely did so at length. 

He wondered at the news that had pulled Sherlock away from a case. His friend might, even now, be grieving some great and sudden loss. The thought was distressing. He did not much care to think of Sherlock in pain.

The news segment changed. He stared uncomprehendingly for a moment at the sight of a small building consumed in flame, of firefighters in full uniform rushing in with hoses. 

His heart sank. 

**BREAKING NEWS: RESEARCH CLINIC FIREBOMBED** the scrolling news ticker proclaimed. **TWO DEAD IN DEVASTATING ATTACK**

He grabbed for his coat. 

*

"Sherlock." 

His mother was as put-together as always. She regarded him with a strange expression, somewhere caught between disdain and fondness. 

He nodded, a short, sharp little jerk of his head. Moved to step past her and into the house. 

She reached out, stopped him. Pulled him forward into an awkward hug. He allowed it for a moment, bringing his arms up to pat her hesitantly on the back. 

After a moment, she released him. Stepped back, studied him. 

He held steady under her assessing gaze. No sense being put off by it. She couldn't help it any more than he could. 

"Where's the emergency?" he asked, glancing around. "Surely you didn't bring me all this way for hug." 

"No," she said. "I believe we'd both find that rather unnecessary." She hesitated for a moment, uncharacteristically unsure. "Your father's in the living room," she said, finally.

He reared back, studied her for a moment. He could read the habits she'd developed over the last several years with ease: her fingernails, always neat, now slightly ragged at the edges, skin on her hands mildly chapped. Calluses on the side of her right index finger and thumb. She'd taken up painting. He was sure to find evidence of it around the house, canvases propped against walls, boxed in hallways. An abundance of them, certainly, she was never one for doing anything by halves. 

And she'd always needed something to keep her busy. For years, it had been her work. After, it had been—well. He didn't much know. Or care. But it had been something, surely. 

But his father—his father _there?_

As far as he knew, his parents had not spoken, except in cases of absolute necessity (his brief and wholly unnecessary rehab stint overseas sprang immediately and unpleasantly to mind), since their divorce. They'd sold the place in Maryland. Gone their separate ways. Sherlock had come home from England and had promptly set to work catching serial killers. Their lives rarely had cause to intersect. 

That, as far as he knew, had been that. 

He'd suspected, from his mother's voice on the phone as he'd stood with John in the doorway at the Hatherley house, that his father had either died or fallen seriously ill. That no longer seemed likely, and he attempted to forcibly rearrange his thoughts to fit this new puzzle piece. 

"Ah," he said, looking away. "Emergency. Now I see. Want me to roust him for you?" 

"Sherlock," his mother said, and there was a flatness to her voice he did not like. Normally she made an effort to at least sound irritated with him when he made the effort to be irritating. 

"The point," he said, snapping his fingers. "I assume you intend to get to it?" 

She looked helplessly at him, and his stomach bottomed out, a sickening swoop of childish fear and doubt that he had not felt in years and years and years. He looked at her once more, then brushed past, striding down the hallway, glancing through doorways until he found the right one. 

His father was sitting on a couch in front of the fireplace (gas, clean-burning, ventless), holding a mug in surprisingly steady hands. He was speaking softly to someone in an armchair across from him. 

He'd aged, was Sherlock's first nonsensical thought, followed quickly by a sharp rebuke that of _course_ he'd aged, it had been years, that's what people did. 

He looked from his father to the man in the chair. He was young, early thirties at most. Dark hair. Slim. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, smiled.

Sherlock studied him. He was pale, hands smooth, worked indoors. No animal fur of any kind on his pants legs. No wedding ring. He did not wear a watch. 

He cleared his throat. 

His father and the man both looked up, the movements oddly synchronized. 

"I was told there was an emergency," Sherlock said, standing stiffly in the doorway. "This hardly seems urgent." 

"Sherlock," his father said, standing. He took a faltering step forward and then turned back towards the stranger, who had also risen to his feet. They exchanged tentative smiles, and the sight inexplicably annoyed him. 

"Sherlock, hi," the man said, coming forward, hand extended. His smile had spread. It was ridiculous. Unflattering. It made him look like a buffoon. "Wow, um. So good to—well—" 

And then he had Sherlock's hand grasped in his own, was shaking it firmly and warmly as if they knew each other and _who in the_ hell _was this person—_

"Sherlock," his father said, his voice cracking a little bit. "This is your brother. Sherrinford." 

Sherlock jerked his hand back as though it had been burned, blinking, struggling to process. He instinctively looked over ~~Sherrinford~~ the man again, noted the dark hair (clipped short, the curl well-disguised), the pale eyes, the chin. 

It was ~~possible~~ impossible. 

_You should have been_ watching _him._

He turned around without speaking, went back down the long hallway (much too long, ridiculously long, his mother was one lonely person and had selected a house that would have been overlarge for a family of twelve.) He went out the front door, onto the porch, spared half a glance at his mother where she stood, leaning against a post, smoking a cigarette. 

She didn't speak, just looked at him. The end of her cigarette glowed red in the darkness.

He stared back, tried to find the stranger in her eyes, in her skin, in the slope of her nose and the shape of her chin. 

Then he went down the drive, got into his car, started it up. He pulled away from the curb, did not look back. 

*

It was chaos.

Flashing lights, uniformed police and firemen, bystanders shouting and screaming and crying. 

The clinic itself was still ablaze—less fire and more hellish inferno, the heat staggering even as far back as John stood. They'd done an admirable job of containing it from spreading, but there seemed to be little hope of salvaging any part of the building. 

Sweat beaded on his face and he tipped his head away from the glare, turning his attention back towards the woman in scrubs huddled under a blanket in the back of an ambulance.

Her face was dark with soot. There was a cut on her temple that an EMT was fussing over, working with a quiet efficiency. 

"I'm Agent Watson," he told her, crouching down, speaking softly. Her eyes went to him and then flitted over his shoulder, watching the building burn. "Were you inside when this happened?" 

"Yes," she said. She looked down at her hands. "I was in the lab with Dr. Hatherley. We were running a test on one of the samples. It hadn't—it hadn't finished yet." 

John swallowed, nodded, reached for his notepad. "What happened next?" 

"There was a man. He—he came right through the door. He looked right at us. Vic—Dr. Hatherley, he told me to run. So I ran. I could hear them struggling behind me, and then he screamed—" she shook her head, pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. "The whole place went up. I was halfway out the door when it—the explosion, it pushed me. Knocked me clean off my feet. They're saying that Vic's dead. The girl at the desk, too." 

"You said that Dr. Hatherley told you to run. When he saw the man. Did it—did it seem like he knew him? Like he might have known who it was?" 

"What, like Vic had something to do with this? Like he knew—? No, no way. No. He couldn't have." She shook her head, grimaced. She met his gaze, and her shoulders sagged, her eyes fluttered closed with sudden resignation. "Except—he—he did seem to recognize him. In some way. The look on his face when that man came through the door—oh my God." 

John nodded, slipped his notepad back into his pocket. "After you've been checked out, would you be willing to work with a police sketch artist?" 

As she was nodding her assent, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He grabbed at it with a jolt of shocked relief. He stepped down from the ambulance, ducked between two news vans, pressed the phone against his ear. 

"Sherlock?" 

"Agent Watson?" 

The voice on the other line was very plainly not Sherlock.

"It's Elise. Elise Hatherley." Her voice was strained, barely audible. "Please. You need to come." 

His dismay was immediately replaced with alarm. 

"Elise," he said, straightening. "Are you all right?" 

"No," she said. "An hour ago, I was informed that my husband was dead. And ten minutes ago, he just walked through the front door." 

*

Sherlock had driven to the end of the street, no farther.

He idled at a stop sign, his turn signal blinking. After a moment, he slipped the car into park, leaned his head back against the headrest, shut his eyes. 

"Not like you to leave a mystery unsolved," John said from the passenger seat. 

Sherlock opened his eyes. 

John was, of course, not there. 

He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, looked through the windshield at the surrounding houses, big and set back from the street, all lit up and welcoming in the dark. 

He had been twelve years old the last time he had seen his brother. Twelve years old and strange and haughty and relentlessly curious. He'd been twelve and yet he'd felt much younger, barely more than a child, on that terrible night, wrapped in a blanket and struggling to answer questions, stammering over his answers, his teeth chattering, conscious of the noise and the light and the expression that flitted periodically over the officer's face that said he wasn't being taken seriously. 

His father in his good suit, his mother in an evening gown. Called away from their party. Tears, hysterics, panic. He'd never seen his mother panic before. 

"I don't remember," he'd said. He'd whined it, really, simpering, sniveling, snot running down his face as he shook and shivered and cried. People had recoiled from him, a cringing, pathetic thing. He'd been tasked with watching his brother, a simple task, a task that hundreds of thousands of idiots managed daily without any trouble whatsoever. He'd been given that task, and he'd failed, and then on the heels of his failure he'd utterly collapsed. He'd been useless. He could remember nothing of importance. 

Nothing. No facts. No details. Just Sherrinford. Yelling. Lights. His brother shouting his name, once, in a high-pitched panicky voice. 

His brother, who in his absence, had set the course of Sherlock's life as effectively as any navigator on the high seas. 

"Surely you have some opinion on this, John," he said.

"Afraid this one's a bit outside my scope," John said. There was a smile in his voice, his tone gentle, apologetic. Sherlock very pointedly did not look at the empty seat next to him. 

He put the car back into gear, turned around. Pulled up against the curb in front of his mother's house for the second time that night. 

He got out, moving quickly, decisively. Back up the drive, up the steps on the porch, past his mother and her cigarette. Into the house, down the hallway, through the doorway into the living room. 

Sherrinford was standing alone near the fireplace, hands clasped behind his back, studying a collection of photographs on the mantel.

"This is probably a lot for you to swallow," he said without turning around. His voice was mild. There was nothing of the child he'd once been in the sound. 

Sherlock mirrored his posture, hands behind his back, and stepped up next to him. They were of a height. 

There was a photograph of them, on the mantel, framed. Sherlock knew it well; it adorned his desk in the basement office as well. He'd kept it with him, always, a tangible memento of his failure, something to both remind him and galvanize him into action when his resolve slipped.

His own smile in the picture had always bewildered him. It was free, unfettered. Wild, in a way. 

"I remember you," Sherrinford said, not looking at him. "Not a lot. Bits and pieces, mostly. But we used to play on the beach. You were a pirate captain, and I was your first mate." 

"That could be a memory from any child's life." 

"Yes. It could be. But it's a memory from mine," Sherrinford said. "And yours." 

Sherlock did not respond. He could not seem to pull his eyes away from the photograph. 

"Mom called me 'sunny' and you 'stormy' sometimes, do you remember that?" 

Sherlock started, turned to face him. He cleared his throat. "I hadn't thought of that in years." 

"Me either," Sherrinford said, and then he started to laugh. 

After a moment, Sherlock chuckled. The laughter felt strange, disconnected. He was abruptly very tired. "Where have you been?" 

Sherrinford shrugged. "About a year ago, I started having problems with anxiety. Nightmares. Panic attacks. Nothing helped. I—uh—the dreams started getting more specific. I could remember faces. Places. And finally, a name. It wasn't much, but it was a start. Took me a while to track it down." 

"Do you remember—anything? About what happened to you?" 

"Like I said, bits and pieces. My family—the—the family that raised me, they had no idea about any of it. They'd been told I was an orphan, that I'd lost my parents in a car accident, that I'd been traumatized and had no recollection of the incident."

"Just like that," Sherlock mused. His voice was calm, his breathing steady. John would have been able to read his rising anger in the set of his shoulders, but John was not there. 

Years of guilt. Years of anger, of blame, of confusion. Suspicious faces on the Vineyard, doors shut in his face. Leaving his childhood home and possessions behind, trailing like a wraith behind two damaged parents. The fresh start in Maryland, the fresh start that hadn't been very fresh at all—not when Wilkes had found a news article and had connected the dots. Sherlock had arrived one morning to find the lockers papered with his own face, too-thin and pale, damning in black-and-white. He hadn't needed to read the headline, he'd seen it already. 

**BOY, 8, STILL MISSING. POLICE: BROTHER IS PERSON OF INTEREST**

"I couldn't remember," Sherrinford said, his tone defensive, as if he, too, were able to read Sherlock's barely perceptible anger. "I would have wanted to come home. I'm here now." 

He thought about the things he'd come to remember, later. The things he, as a child, could not speak of, had locked away in the farthest reaches of his mind palace. The bright light, the paralyzing fear. The way his brother had gone rigid, lifted up off of the ground, his eyes rolling helplessly in his head. Crying out Sherlock's name. 

Eight years old. 

_You should have been_ watching _him._

He would be capable of this, he thought. If he set his mind to it, he could insinuate himself into the home of a grieving family, could read their need in their faces and their history in their photographs and mold himself into whatever they wanted. Their grief and desire for closure would smooth the path. They would want so badly for him to be what he said he was that they'd accept nearly anything. 

It was not something he would ever choose to do. But he _could._ And if he could, so could someone else. 

"You don't trust me," Sherrinford said. 

"Don't take it personally," Sherlock said. "I don't trust anyone." 

"I can't give you proof." 

"Actually, you can," Sherlock said. "I'll want blood tests run. As soon as possible. If you'd come back with me, I've a frie—a partner, at the Bureau. He's a medical doctor." 

"Sure," Sherrinford said. He seemed almost amused. "Whatever you want. But there's something I need you to do for me first." 

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Of course there is. Let me guess. You've a bank account in a foreign country and need help moving the funds? Or perhaps you'd—"

"Jesus, you really haven't gotten any easier to deal with since we were kids," Sherrinford said. He was still smiling, but it was pinched at the edges. "A lot of it was normal big-brother stuff, but you really were kind of a dick." 

His mouth clicked shut. He found, suddenly, that he didn't know what to say. 

"This is—" Sherrinford blew out a heavy breath, turned away from the mantel, sat back down in the armchair. "I didn't want to just hit you with this right away. But I think—if what I've found out about you, through my research, is right, I think our interests align. And I'm in danger. I need your help." 

"Our _interests?_ What interests might those be?" 

"I think you know." 

"I think you'd best be specific," Sherlock said. 

Sherrinford nodded, rubbed his hands over his face. "Then you might want to sit down."

*

The front door to the Hatherley house yawed open, light spilling out into the darkened street. John went through it with his gun drawn, heart pounding. 

"FBI," he announced, moving quickly down the hall, pausing to check the kitchen. "Elise? Are you in here?" 

He came upon them in the living room, on the couch he and Sherlock had sat on only hours earlier. 

Elise Hatherley was curled up at one end, knees tucked under her chin, cheeks wet with tears. She lifted her head as John entered the room. 

At the other end of the couch, slumped against the armrest, was who he could only assume to be Victor Hatherley. His clothes stank of smoke, leaving sooty smears on the fabric. He had a sodden red cloth wrapped around his right hand, which he cradled in his lap. His eyes were half-lidded, distant. A sheen of sweat on his face. 

John approached cautiously. 

Hatherley stirred, his eyes fluttering fully open. They were startlingly pale, haunted. His pupils were dilated. "I guess I gave her a bit of a shock, turning up like this." 

With another glance at Elise Hatherley, who did indeed seem shaken up but unharmed, John holstered his weapon, sat down on the edge of the coffee table. "There's a good number of people who believe you were killed in a fire this evening." 

"Clearly not," Hatherley said. "Made it out unharmed. Well." He looked down at his hand, winced as he adjusted the binding. "Mostly unharmed." 

"That's not my husband," Elise said. 

John glanced at her, frowned. She had pressed herself against the armrest, as far away as she could go without getting up off of the couch. She was biting her lip. 

"Not this again," Hatherley said. "I don't know what I have to do to convince you. I'm me." 

"I know my husband," she said. "And you're not him." 

"Dr. Hatherley," John said. "How _did_ you get out of the building?" 

"Went out the back," he said. 

"Right," he said. "And the nurse who said she saw you struggling with the assailant before the fire broke out?" 

"Clearly she was mistaken. It was a frightening situation. Disorienting. Everything happened very fast." 

He was clearly in shock, his skin pallid, sweaty. His breathing was rapid, pupils wide, a slight tremor to his hands. He shifted on the couch, groaned as he bumped his wrapped hand.

"What happened to your hand?" John asked.

"Nothing. Just a scratch." 

"Doesn't look like a scratch." 

"It's fine." 

John nodded. He stood up. "Dr. Hatherley, I'm going to have to ask you to come with me." 

"Go with you where? I'm not going anywhere." 

John squared his shoulders. "At absolute minimum, you're a witness in an active criminal investigation. I'd like you to come with me to the Philadelphia field office, and I'd prefer if you did so willingly." 

He left the implied threat unspoken, though it was written in his tensed muscles, his military-straight posture, his calm readiness. 

Hatherley stared at him for a moment, slender and exhausted and injured. Not much of a threat. He seemed to know it, and he shut his eyes. "They'll kill me." 

"Who?"

He shook his head, laughed miserably. "Better get on with it." 

"Vic," Elise said, standing up. She held back, staying out of arms reach. "I—" 

"I don't know why you don't believe me," he said, staring at her for a moment. Then he looked back at John. "You don't have to cuff me, do you?" 

"I'd like to take a look at your hand before we go." 

Hatherley shrugged, held out his limb. John fetched himself a pair of plastic gloves, set about unwrapping the cloth.

"Jesus," he breathed. To his right, Elise made a horrified sound. 

Hatherley's right thumb had been severed. Blood oozed sluggishly from the wound. 

"How did this happen?" he asked. He'd been expecting a burn. He turned Hatherley's hand gently, examining the torn flesh. There were no ragged edges. It was a neat cut.

"A sharp object of some strength met a weaker object. One of them had to yield." 

He was growing weary of Hatherley's glib nonchalance. It reminded him, oddly, of Sherlock.

He re-wrapped the wound with gauze that Elise provided. "I'll make sure you're treated," he said. 

"Doesn't really matter." 

John shut his eyes for a moment. Sherlock would have something terribly witty and cutting to say in a moment like this. And he'd go ahead and say it, and John would scold him, and they'd probably giggle about it later. 

"Let's go," he said. His tone brokered no argument.

It wasn't witty. It wasn't cutting. But Hatherley stood up from the couch and followed him out the door on unsteady legs.

John glanced back in the rear view mirror as they pulled away. Elise Hatherley's worried face peered out the window, half hidden behind the curtains. 

*

"The memories I've recovered," Sherrinford said. "They aren't all good ones." 

"Can't imagine why they would be," Sherlock said, the corners of his mouth pulling down. "You did disappear from our home in a flash of bright light. Presumably that didn't lead to a fantastic adventure." 

They had gone out onto the porch, breath misting in the chill air. The house was silent and dark behind them.

His mother had retired to her bedroom. His father had, presumably, been installed in one of the guest rooms. The pair of them, unaccustomed to sharing space, seemed to have come to an unsteady truce.

"I was experimented on," Sherrinford said. "I think you've suspected as much." 

"Experimented on by whom?"

"Experimented on by _what_."

Sherlock rolled his eyes, stepped to the edge of the porch, looked out at the grand houses, nestled back behind trees, porchlights glowing small and warm amongst the darkness. 

His mother had left her cigarettes on the railing. He picked up the pack, shook one out, lit it. Turned, offered one wordlessly to Sherrinford, who raised his brows. 

"Thought you'd be smarter than that," Sherrinford said. 

"Mm," Sherlock agreed. He set the pack back down on the railing.

The first inhale was pleasant, like greeting an old friend. It had been years. He stood for a moment, eyes closed, listening. The night was alive with sound, even in the quiet. The faint hiss of burning paper from the cigarette. Sherrinford's even breaths. The chirp of insects. The distant sound of traffic. He opened his eyes, turned back. 

"You're confirming that what I saw that night, what I remember seeing that night, is correct," he said, taking another pull on the cigarette. "For clarity's sake, yes? You were abducted from our home by extraterrestrials?" 

"Yes," Sherrinford said. He did not smile. "And I was taken away for tests." 

"What kind of tests?"

"You know what kind of tests."

"No," Sherlock said. He drew the cigarette out of his mouth, flicked away the ash. His hand trembled. "I need you to be specific. I'd prefer not to make any assumptions." 

"You still don't believe me." 

"I want to believe," Sherlock said, and the admission brought with it a hot, wrenching sensation in his chest. Wholly unfamiliar. He looked away. "That's enough to be going on with for now." 

"Fine," Sherrinford said, his voice short. "You've heard the stories. They're true. All of them. Vivisection. Probes. Mind control."

"You don't have any scars." 

"Their technology is more advanced than ours." 

"No," Sherlock said. "Too convenient. You're lying." 

"Nothing about this is convenient." Sherrinford laughed, sat down on one of the porch chairs. He put his head in his hands. "I don't know how long I was with them. My memory is hazy. I screamed. I cried. I wanted to go home. And then there were men, and they came and took me with them. They told me my parents had been killed in a car crash, that I'd been having nightmares, that I was sick. They told me they would help me." 

"What men?"

"Want me to pick them out of a lineup?" Sherrinford raised his brows, leaned back in his chair. "I don't know who they were. Men. In any case, I was placed with a family. They raised me as their own." 

"Where does needing my help fit in to this heartwarming little story?" 

"Because they also raised me into the family business." 

"And what is that?" 

"I'm not stupid," Sherrinford said. "We're different, you and I, but—"

"I never thought you were stupid." 

"Yes you did," Sherrinford laughed.

Sand under his feet, the crash of the surf, wind in his hair. Gulls overhead. The sun, beating down, merciless, painting red stripes on his shoulders, his nose, his back. His brother, poking stubby fingers into his carefully constructed sand castle. _No no no, stop that, what are you doing? Don't be so stupid!_

"You were a child," Sherlock said. He looked down. 

"So were you." 

"The point," he ground out. "Please feel free to come to it." 

"The point is, obviously the people who raised me were neck-deep in whatever had happened. But they're good people, Sherlock. They were trying to fight it. In whatever way they could." 

"Fight what?" 

"The end of the world." 

It startled a laugh out of him, the sound sharp and cynical. An angry laugh, the kind of sound that more often came out of John. And oh, what he wouldn't give to have John standing here right now, offering his incorrect opinions, lending his quiet strength. 

It was a startling thought, and a sobering one. He stubbed out his cigarette, threw it into the grass. 

"There's an ashtray right here." 

He shrugged, unconcerned.

"Would you believe me if I told you that there is a vast conspiracy at work? That a small faction, representative of a shadow government behind the public face of our world's leaders, is secretly colluding with an alien race to facilitate colonization? A takeover?" 

"Would anyone believe that?" 

"I'm not asking anyone. I'm asking you." 

Sherlock hedged, smoothed his hands down the side of his coat. He sat down on the second chair. "I'm listening." 

"They've known about it for years. They cut a deal, mainly to save their own necks. They're clearing a path, making it easy. For when they come." Sherrinford stood up, paced halfway across the porch before turning back. "There are a few in the group who have come to represent a dissenting opinion. They're working from within to stop it. To sabotage efforts."

"How." 

"To understand how, you need to understand the original purpose. There are people. People like me. Scattered throughout the country. Throughout the world. We were raised for this, shaped for this. Given training, jobs. Almost exclusively in the medical field. Placed strategically throughout the world. With very specific instructions on what to do once the invasion began." He smiled again, his face bitter. "When we received word, we were to mobilize. Destroy vaccines, blood supplies, sabotage pharmacies. Leave the human race weak. Vulnerable to attack." 

Sherlock nodded, processed this. A network of sleeper agents, just waiting for word. Deals forged in the shadows. Paranoid, certainly, but not entirely farfetched. 

"I assume they assured your survival, somehow," Sherlock said. "Otherwise there would be little incentive for cooperation." 

"Yes," he said. He pressed his lips together, frowned. "I and—and the others. We've been. Altered. In a way." 

"Altered how?" Sherlock narrowed his eyes, studied him. In the dim light, face half shrouded in shifting shadows, he could be anyone. 

"Altered enough to remain standing when people start catching an intergalactic cold." Sherrinford shrugged. "They put something in my head." 

Sherlock sat back, blinked. Thought of those kids in Bellefleur saying the same thing. 

"But here's where things get really weird," Sherrinford said. He grinned. 

"A cure," Sherlock said. The pill, the one that Hope had been feeding to those kids. It had been killing them, but only as a side effect of killing something else. 

Sherrinford gave him a curious look, pale eyes nearly colorless under the porchlight. "You've seen this before." 

"A little over a year ago," Sherlock said. "In Oregon." 

"The formula has been improved." 

"So it's no longer killing the host," he said dryly. "I suppose that is an improvement." 

"Well. Without the influence of an omnipresent spy in one's brain, it's amazing how quickly people are able to come to the conclusion that what they're doing is wrong. Efforts have been underway to synthesize a vaccine that would render the human race immune to the kind of viral attack they're planning." 

"Have your efforts been successful?"

Sherrinford shrugged, waggled his hand. "Mixed results. The work has to be done in secrecy. That slows things down. If anyone knew what we were doing—" 

"Right," Sherlock said. "Cataclysm. Doom. Global apocalypse." 

"We all take our orders from someone," Sherrinford said. "And it's impossible to know how many of us are—well. How many of us are working on the side of the angels versus how many are in bed with the devil." He looked down at his hands, blew out a frustrated breath. "In our work, we've been given limited access to genetic material. A pure source." 

"Alien?"

"Of course. It was part of the original negotiation. Turned over to our scientists in exchange for cooperation. Use of this material is what enabled me and others like me to be—altered—in the first place. It's also what we're attempting to utilize in order to work on our vaccine." 

"Attempting to utilize?" 

"It's kept in a research facility. Highest level of security. Our access is extremely restricted." Sherrinford tipped his head back, his teeth flashing in a grim smile. "And it only gets worse. I'm afraid that someone has put the pieces together, that our efforts are in danger of being exposed. Doctors, medical personnel, people that I have reason to suspect are like me—they're being killed." 

The clinics, Sherlock thought. The bombings in Virginia and Ohio. The threats against the one in Philadelphia. He'd had absolutely no idea why on earth he and John had received the assignment. Someone must have ensured that it would cross their path. 

The question was who. 

"I have to call my partner," he said. "This information may impact a case we were working on—lives may be at risk." 

"It's too late for them," Sherrinford said. "If he knows where they are, they're already dead. The only thing that matters, the _only_ thing, is getting my hands on that material." 

"How?" Sherlock said, frustrated. He stood up. The damp air was cold on his face. "You said it's restricted access."

"I know where it is. I know how to get in. I have clearance—my thumbprint will open all the right doors." 

"If you have clearance, why haven't you just gone and gotten it?" Sherlock snapped. Elise Hatherley, he thought. She thought her husband was three people. Somehow this all tied together. 

"Because once I do, they'll know the jig is up. I need someone to watch my back. I was hoping that person would be you." Sherrinford stopped his nervous pacing, took a step so he was right in front of Sherlock. His eyes, so eerily similar to the ones Sherlock saw in the mirror every day. His voice dropped into a craggy drawl, an odd parody of a pirate's brogue. "What do you say, brother? Care to plunder some treasure? For old time's sake?" 

*

Agent Gregson met him at the Philadelphia field office, waved them in through the entrance. He handed Hatherley off to two other agents to be brought into a room for questioning, arranged to have a medical team paged to take a look at his hand. 

"Something's off about him," John said. 

"You think he's involved?" 

"I don't know," John said. "But his wife is utterly convinced that there's something wrong. And the nurse I spoke to a few hours ago was similarly convinced that she'd seen him die." 

"We won't know anything until we're able to get a team inside that building to search for remains. And that's not going to be for a while," Gregson said. 

"His thumb," John said. "Someone cut it off. It wasn't an accident. He didn't catch it in a door, or have it crushed by falling debris. The edges are too neat. There's minimal tearing. He used a surgical tool." 

"You think he did it to himself?" 

"Hard to say," John hedged. 

"I'd suspect some kind of corporate espionage," Gregson mused. "Except the clinic didn't use thumbprint scanners. Nothing they did was particularly secretive, beyond the typical medical confidentiality laws."

"Oh," John said, remembering. "At the scene. The nurse who witnessed the attack—she said she was willing to work with a sketch artist. Do you know if anyone met with her?"

"I can do you one better," Gregson said. "They'd recently installed cameras in the labs. Part of the push for increased security following the latest threats." 

"You've got the bomber on tape?"

"We're distributing screen grabs to the press as we speak," Gregson said, running a hand over his face. His eyes were bloodshot, cheeks stubbled. He looked like he'd been running on empty for the better part of the day. 

John wondered what time it was. Late. Early. His own eyes felt gritty, sandy, his body alight with a kind of nervous tension that had kept him awake and hyper aware during long patrols in Afghanistan. 

"Running these through the Bureau's facial recognition software, too," Gregson said, pulling up some images on his computer. "Hopefully we get a hit, or someone who knows the guy comes forward." 

John squinted at the screen. The image was grainy, black-and-white. 

"Technology gets better and cheaper every year, and somehow security footage still looks like this," he muttered. 

Gregson shrugged, took another sip of his coffee. 

The man on the screen was blurry, partially hidden in shadow. Nonetheless, he cut an imposing figure. He was tall. Broad. Oddly proportioned. 

"Not a face you see every day," John conceded. Poor quality image or not, the man would stand out in a crowd. Surely someone would be able to identify him. 

"Let's see what the good doctor has to say for himself," Gregson said. 

John followed Gregson through the labyrinthine hallways. They arrived outside of a small room, a guard standing watch by the door. 

"Back already?" the guard asked, smiling at John. "Forget to ask him something?" 

John glanced at Gregson, who looked equally confused. They both turned their attention towards the small plexiglass window cut into the door. 

"What are you talking about?" John demanded. He could see nothing through the window. An empty table. Empty chair. 

The smile slid from the guard's face. "You—you were just in there with him. Less than five minutes ago." 

"Open the door." 

He pushed inside, already certain of what he would find. The little metal chair had been pushed back a ways from the table. Hatherley lay in a crumpled heap on the floor, face down, body curled around his injured hand. 

John dropped into a crouch, pressed his fingers against Hatherley's neck. The skin was already cooling. He searched in vain for a pulse. 

Gregson had stepped up behind him, his phone out. "Pull the video feed for this room," he barked into it. "And lock down the building. No one in or out. NOW." 

"He's dead," John said, sitting back on his heels. He thought of Elise Hatherley, her pale and worried face peering through the curtains as he'd pulled away from her home. For the second time in one night, she'd be getting a phone call informing her of her husband's death. 

"Agent Watson, we've got the feed," Gregson said. 

He stood, followed Gregson down the hall to the nearest computer.

 _They'll kill me_ , Hatherley had said, back at the house. John had dismissed his concern. 

Gregson had a video file up, better quality than the security footage from the clinic. Hatherley sat in the little metal chair in the little room, his arms folded on the table, bandaged right hand extended gingerly. He'd pillowed his head on his forearms. 

The door opened. Hatherley lifted his head. 

John blinked. Stared. 

"That's you," Gregson said. He backed away from the computer, staring at John. His hand drifted towards the holster on his hip. 

"I was with you the whole time," John said, speaking slowly, calmly. On the screen, he stepped further into the room, sat down at the table across from Hatherley.

"Where is it?" he asked in the video feed. He crossed his arms, leaned back in his chair. 

"He's not wearing the same suit that I am," John said, attention caught between the video and Gregson, who was watching him with a coiled tension. "Look." 

Gregson looked, nodded, looked back at the screen. The tension did not leave his shoulders. 

Hatherley had not answered the man on the screen, was simply staring at him with an expression of dull, resigned horror. 

"I'll ask again," Not-John said, calm, so calm. "Where is it?" 

"Gone," Hatherley said. "You won't get it from me." 

Not-John shrugged. "Then you know what happens now." 

"Yes," Hatherley said. "I suppose I do." 

Not-John stood up, advanced. Hatherley, in spite of his voiced acceptance of his fate, kicked back out of his chair, flattened himself against the wall. The other man was upon him in an instant. They struggled, crashing to the ground rolling out of the camera's view behind the table. 

The man who stood up from the ground was not John. 

"What the—" Gregson said. 

He was wearing the same suit clothes. But the face, the body—

John stared, stared, stared as the large, imposing man from the clinic security footage straightened up, squared his shoulders, looked directly at the camera. 

_There's a perfect screen grab to send to the press,_ he thought, half-hysterically. 

"Was he—" Gregson shook his head. Opened his mouth, shut it. Shook his head again. "Was he wearing a mask? How did he—? What the hell just happened?" 

John shoved away from the desk, went back into the interrogation room. Other than the corpse on the floor, nothing at all was amiss. 

He crouched back down next to Hatherley. There was a bead of fluid on the back of his neck, an odd, vivid green. 

"Gloves," he shouted. "I need gloves. I think he was injected with something." 

Gregson came into the room, moving slow, his face still slack with shock. He handed John a pair of latex gloves. 

John prodded at the back of Hatherley's neck. A ribbon of green fluid, thick, viscous, gushed from a tiny puncture. His nose twitched, his eyes tearing at the influx of a sharp scent. 

"What the—" Gregson took a step back, swiping at his eyes with his forearm. 

"Some kind of toxin," John gasped, standing up, grabbing Gregson's arm, tugging him from the room. His eyes stung. The sensation was not unlike slicing into a particularly potent onion. 

He slammed the door behind them, took a deep breath. Looked through the thick plexiglass window. 

The corpse was _moving._

He jolted in alarm, before realizing that Hatherley wasn't actually struggling to stand up. Instead, his entire body seemed to be twitching, bubbling, _melting._

"Oh Jesus, Jesus Christ," Gregson babbled, gaping through the window next to him. "What the hell. What the hell is this?" 

The body quivered as green bubbled forth from its pores, running and pooling on the ground. The chest collapsed, caved in, melted away. 

John stared. His mouth had fallen open. His face and eyes still stung from… from whatever the hell that green stuff had been. 

Hatherley was gone. _Gone._

In his place, a steaming puddle of green fluid. It had begun slowly eating its way through the floor. Like some kind of acid. 

He had his phone out of his pocket before he was aware that he'd done so.

"John," Sherlock said, his rich voice so unexpected and welcome that John's knees almost buckled with relief. 

"Sherlock, thank Christ," John said, aware that his tone had taken on a slight edge of hysteria. He tore his gaze away from the window, stepped further down the hall, leaned against a wall. "Are you all right? I—" 

"I'm fine," Sherlock said. His tone had cooled. "Was there something you needed?" 

"Sherlock," John said. "This case is weird. Even for you." 

Sherlock cleared his throat. There was something odd about his voice, distracted. "You're going to have to handle it. I'm taking some time off." 

John blinked. "You're—you're what?" 

"Personal time. Surely you've heard of it?"

"Yes, of course I've—but listen, Sherlock, Dr. Hatherley is dead—" 

"And I have full confidence in your abilities as an investigator," Sherlock said. "I assume you'll be able to identify the perpetrator and bring them to justice. Was there anything else?" 

"What's going on? Are you all right—?"

"I did say that I was fine," Sherlock said. "I'll be in touch." 

He hung up. 

John took the phone away from his ear, stared at it in disbelief. He slipped it back into his pocket, looked over to where a group of people had gathered near the door to the interrogation room. 

"I want that cordoned off," he snapped, his tone authoritative. He'd been good at giving orders, once. "We need to establish a quarantine zone until we can identify whatever that substance was. You sealed off the building—has anyone matching the perpetrator's description been found? We'll need this place searched. Top to bottom. He has to be here." 

Gregson tore his eyes away from the mess behind the door. He nodded, once. "Right. Um. You heard the man. Let's go." 

John watched the agents scatter. He glanced through the glass again. The green mess on the floor had stopped steaming, seemed to have slowed in its progression through the tile. Whatever acidic malignance it had possessed, it seemed to be wearing off. 

Christ, he thought. This was a hell of a time for Sherlock to be going AWOL. 

*

"You must be a joy to work with," Sherrinford said, watching as Sherlock dropped his phone back into his coat pocket. 

Sherlock frowned at him, did not respond. 

He couldn't speak to John. Couldn't let his mind be distracted. Not now, not when he had an immediate and pressing concern. 

"We should get to the airport. Makes sense to leave now, before they wake up," Sherrinford glanced meaningfully back at the house. "I don't particularly feel like explaining all of this again." 

"Where are we going?" Sherlock asked. 

Liberty, Indiana," Sherrinford said. 

His stomach gave an unpleasant little lurch. "Baskerville." 

"You've heard of it?" 

"You could say that." 

"Good. Then you know what we're up against." 

He started towards Sherlock's car, his hands in his pockets, footsteps light, almost skipping. He turned, his pale face cast in moonlight. "Coming?"

Sherlock pulled his coat close. Went down the steps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, feel free to say hi on [Tumblr.](http://www.discordantwords.tumblr.com)


	6. Eloquent Dust (Part 2)

*

"We've got a match," Agent Gregson said from the doorway.

John broke away from the staff he was briefing, followed him back towards his work station. 

"Facial recognition picked him up." 

"Who is he?" John asked, peering at the screen. 

"His name's Oskar Dzundza. Killer for hire. Based out of the Czech Republic, if you'd believe it. Something of an expert in his field." Gregson angled the monitor towards John so he could get a better look. 

The man on the screen was impossibly tall, impossibly gaunt, terribly imposing. 

"While he was active, he went by the code name Golem. Had a knack for literally squeezing the life out of his victims." 

John looked at the picture, noted the long arms, the huge hands. It was not a difficult thing to imagine.

"And, apparently, a knack for disguise," he said.

"More than that, it seems," Gregson said, glancing up. "According to our records, Dzundza's dead." 

"What?"

"Confirmed killed in a CIA operation in Russia six years ago." 

John looked back at the screen. "Then who the hell was that in your interrogation room?" 

Gregson shrugged, looking uncomfortable. He'd looked progressively more and more uncomfortable as the night had crept inexorably towards morning, as the sweep of the building turned up no one who wasn't authorized to be there. 

The man who had reduced the unfortunate Victor Hatherley to a puddle of green goo had, somehow, managed to slip out of the building before the official lockdown order had been given. 

And that wasn't even the weirdest part of the whole situation. 

John had no explanation, no explanation at all, for how the man had come to be wearing his face. 

The toxic mess in the interrogation room had, eventually, halted its slow and strange chemical reaction. John had spent the better part of an hour examining samples, had found himself well and truly flummoxed. 

It was like nothing he'd ever seen before. 

Parts of the sample were recognizably human. Other parts— well. It was something else. 

He'd arranged to have additional samples packed up and couriered to Agent Hooper back at headquarters. Hopefully she'd be able to shed some light on what they were dealing with. 

In the meantime, he supposed he ought to be thankful for small favors. Namely, that the acidic green substance had stopped eating its way through the flooring and no longer seemed in danger of asphyxiating the office staff. 

He spared an uncharitable thought towards Sherlock, whose absence had left him mired, alone, in this astoundingly unpleasant investigation. His fleeting pique did not last long.

Mostly, he just worried.

*

Sherlock did not need his brother to provide directions as he drove across the state line from Ohio to Indiana. He had mapped out and traveled this route once, had committed it to memory. He was confident in his ability to navigate, even if his last trip had been more than a year ago, even if the map he called forth from his mind had an uncomfortable blank space where the Baskerville base should be, a blank space which had been carefully penned over with the words **HERE BE MONSTERS.**

Just his mind being fanciful. It did that, from time to time. In spite of his best efforts. 

Sherrinford had been quiet on the plane, his fingers pressed up under his chin, lips pursed in thoughtful consideration. 

Sherlock had watched him out of the corner of his eye. Watched him and _wondered._

Contrary to what John thought of him, he did not believe every inane-sounding story that crossed his path. His ideas might be unconventional, but he arrived at them through logical and ordered thinking. He believed in the fantastic because there were certain situations where ordinary explanations simply did not cut it. 

Sherrinford's story was—

Well. It was _difficult_ to believe. But not unbelievable.

The car shuddered as he turned off the main road and onto a barely-visible dirt path cut into the brush. He had taken this very same turnoff the last time, had hidden his car in the underbrush and set off on foot. 

Gravel kicked up, rattling against the undercarriage of the car as he drove forward. 

He glanced at Sherrinford, who remained silent, impassive, watching the scenery go by. 

"Just going right through the front door, then?" Sherlock asked, finally. His hands had tightened on the wheel. Not a conscious decision. Distressing. 

Sherrinford looked at him. "Of course. Security is much too tight to consider anything else. Someone sneezes within three miles of this place, and they know about it." 

Sherlock nodded, did not speak. Sherrinford looked quite calm. 

"I should have mentioned earlier," Sherrinford said, bending over, rummaging in his little satchel. He came up with two hard plastic identification cards, passed one to Sherlock. "Keys to the kingdom." 

Sherlock looked down at the card in his hand. His own face stared back at him, blank, impassive. The name and identification number were unfamiliar. 

"You prepared this before we spoke," he said, frowning down at his picture. "You assumed I would help you." 

"I didn't assume, I deduced it," Sherrinford said. "Based on everything I learned about you before I made the decision to contact you." 

"And if I'd been—" Sherlock shrugged, floundered, struggled to imagine some other kind of life for himself, one wildly different from the one he'd chosen. "Someone with less utility. Would you still have made contact?"

Sherrinford was silent for a long moment. "Of course," he said finally. "You're family." 

Sherlock elected to ignore the lie in his voice. 

"Anyway, I thought you were the smart one," Sherrinford said. 

"For some time now, I've been the only one," Sherlock said, quiet.

Sherrinford tapped his hands against his legs, fidgety. He seemed to have reached the edge of his tolerance for his own self-possessed stillness. Sherlock could relate. 

"All right," Sherrinford said. There was an edge of laughter in his voice. "Fine. You don't trust me. Fair enough. Trust no one, right? Not a bad motto to live by in this world." 

"Mm," Sherlock said, deliberately noncommittal. 

They had passed the place where he'd once hidden his car. They were closing in on the Baskerville base itself. 

The last time he'd been on this particular stretch of road, he'd been drugged, half-insensate, near delirious with manufactured fear. John had come for him. John had been a quiet, calming presence, even as Sherlock could see the coiled, unvoiced distress in him, could read it in the jump of his pulse, the tightness in his shoulders, the wary readiness of his military countenance. John had come for him, had pulled him out, and had calmed him even while remaining alert and wary, ready for attack. For ambush. 

John had seen him, and had given him exactly what he'd needed. He'd been a fixed point, something real to focus on, something he could use as he regained control of his own mind and began to draw tentative lines between reality and his own nebulous fears. 

John had risked his reputation, his _life_ , to pull Sherlock out of this place, and now here he was, driving right up to the front gate.

His mouth was dry. He thought about pulling over, taking a steadying breath. He rebuked himself, sharply, for wanting or considering any such thing. His mind was sharp, his body's panic response a malfunction. A misfire. Something to be tamped down and controlled. 

He'd panicked, once, as a child, while his brother screamed for help. 

He'd panicked and it had rendered him useless. Helpless. 

He did not pull over. If Sherrinford were aware of his internal conflict, he gave no sign. 

They came around a bend in the road and were upon it. The steel gate, shut tight, loomed before them. It seemed impenetrable. It was absurd, to think they could ever hope to pull this off. 

"Just pull up," Sherrinford said. 

Sherlock pulled up. 

A uniformed guard approached the car, eyeing them with hardened, suspicious eyes. "Identification." 

Sherlock passed over the two badges without comment. He kept his eyes straight ahead, his hands on the wheel. The gate was reinforced. He'd not be able to smash through it, not in their cheap rental. He looked up at the guard towers, calculated the range, the angles. They'd be carrying long-range rifles. If he threw the car into reverse, crouched, he might have a chance if they opened fire. But even if he were able to get away, they'd cut him off, choke his exit points on the narrow pathways. 

Would they shoot him? Or would they just bring him back, a convenient lab rat for more experiments? 

"You're off-schedule, Doctors," the guard said. "You're not due until next week." 

Sherlock blinked. Readjusted his thoughts. Looked at Sherrinford.

"Yes," Sherrinford agreed mildly. "Under normal circumstances. But considering the recent destruction of our laboratories, you could say that normal circumstances no longer apply. We're under a bit of a time crunch. Valuable samples have been lost." 

The guard stared at them, impassive. 

"Perhaps you'd prefer to hear this directly from Mr. Moriarty?" Sherrinford withdrew his phone. "Let me get him on speaker. He so loves these kinds of bureaucratic hiccups—" 

The guard stepped back. "Not necessary." He handed them their badges, pressed a button. The gate slowly slid open. "Pull through." 

They went on up the drive. The base itself, a squat, nondescript building, waited ahead. 

"James Moriarty runs a pharmaceutical research company," Sherlock said. 

"Yes," Sherrinford said. He seemed almost amused. "Among other things." 

Sherlock resisted the urge to look back over his shoulder at the guard. "The US military takes orders from private civilians?" 

"When it's in their best interests to do so," Sherrinford said. "Are you ready? We're going to have to do this quickly." 

*

"Agent Watson," Gregson said from the doorway. 

John looked up, rubbed his eyes. Time had become a nebulous concept. He had no idea whether it was light or dark outside, morning or night. 

"I was told to bring anything weird to you," Gregson said. He sounded apologetic.

"Right," John sighed. He stood up, stretched. His neck creaked. "You're telling me that this gets weirder?" 

"Apparently," Gregson shook his head. "You know we've been pursuing a lead between the threats against Dr. Hatherley's clinic and similar attacks on clinics in Ohio and Virginia." 

Ah, yes, back when this case had seemed to make some semblance of sense. 

"We've received further details. In light of recent events, they are somewhat… disturbing." 

"Disturbing how?" 

"No remains have been found. Although there are multiple witnesses who swear that the alleged victims were inside the building at the time of the fire."

John pinched the bridge of his nose. "Well. Fire that hot. There might not be much left." 

"There's something else."

He looked up. "What is it?"

Gregson hesitated, extended a file folder towards John. "I think you ought to see for yourself." 

John took the folder, opened it, glanced at the contents. 

"They had a hard time with the photographs," Gregson said. "Seems both docs had something of an aversion to cameras." 

It wasn't hard to see why. The two men in the photographs could easily have passed for twins. And, in turn, were dead ringers for Victor Hatherley. John wasn't Sherlock, but even he could do the math on that one. 

"My husband is three people," he murmured. 

"What?"

He looked up. "Elise Hatherley was convinced that the man who came home to her some nights was not the same man she'd married. Maybe she was right." 

Gregson seemed discomfited by the thought. "We've got an APB out on Dzundza. Nothing yet, but I'm fairly confident we'll get a hit soon. He's too distinctive to get far." 

"He got far enough last night," John said. His head had started to ache. He needed coffee. Where was the coffee? Twenty-four hours ago, he'd been settling in to what he considered _his_ chair in the basement office, sipping coffee from a paper cup, listening to Sherlock ramble about UFOs. 

Sherlock had been particularly excited, kid-on-Christmas-morning excited, interrupting himself to take his thoughts down various tangents. He'd managed to convince himself that a UFO had crashed in West Virginia, and that the crash site had remained as yet undiscovered. He'd been endeavoring to convince John that a jaunt out to the West Virginia hills were exactly what the morning called for. 

John had made a bit of a show out of the whole thing—shooting him down, winding him up—but he'd already made up his mind to go along. He'd just wanted to make Sherlock work for it a bit. And then Lestrade had called, and—well. Things had progressed from there. 

And now Sherlock was God-knows-where, dealing with God-knows-what, and it was stupid, beyond stupid, irrational and sentimental and all of the things that Sherlock abhorred, but he'd feel better about this entire mess if he could just _talk_ to him. 

Because the idea of Sherlock willingly taking personal time away from work was, frankly, terrifying. 

He groaned, swiped a hand across his face, looked back up. Gregson was watching him with an expression of mingled concern and alarm. 

"Those men," John said. "The doctors. If they're anything at all like Hatherley, there might not be any remains left to find." 

Nothing but dust, he thought. Dust and ash. 

"Moriarty is releasing a statement—" 

"What?" John snapped to full alertness. 

"Moriarty Pharmaceuticals. They're the parent company that owns all of these clinics." Gregson said. "They're releasing a statement today condemning the acts of violence and calling for witnesses—anyone with information—to contact us." 

"Right," John said. "Um. Good. Let me know if anything promising comes through." 

In his mind, over and over again, Sherlock reached down to pick up a broken capsule stamped with the letter _M_ , hissed in pain and jerked his hand away. 

He looked away, not wanting Gregson to see his mounting unease.

*

They walked right through the front door. 

A guard stopped them at the entrance, glanced at their IDs, waved them through. Sherrinford moved confidently, comfortably. Sherlock matched his stride. 

They went down a long hallway. Their footsteps echoed. 

Sherlock wondered if he'd been dragged down this very hallway, if one of the closed doors they passed led to the dark room in which he'd been held. 

The elevator had a keycard scanner. Sherrinford swiped his. The doors slid open. 

They descended.

The inside of the elevator was mirrored. Sherlock was certain they were on camera.

The doors opened. A sign on the wall in front of them, vivid yellow, announced that their destination was **LEVEL 7: CRYOLOGY**. Below the bold lettering was smaller print, proclaiming: **DO NOT PROCEED WITHOUT PROPER CLEARANCE.**

They proceeded.

The hallway was sterile, white, fluorescent lit. Empty.

"Here," Sherrinford said, swiping his key card against another door. This one labeled **PURITY CONTROL.**

Sherlock followed him into a laboratory, swept his eyes along rows of canisters. 

"What is this?" 

"Not our concern," Sherrinford said, stopping on front of one. He removed his glove, pressed his right thumb against a glass reader. 

The glass glowed green, and the top of the canister slid open. Cloudy wisps rose up as the liquid nitrogen within began to vaporize. 

Sherrinford procured a thick rubber glove, reached through the mist into the canister, withdrew a small container. There was something very small, very shriveled, curled within. 

Something that looked fetal. Something that did not, exactly, appear human. 

"The bag," Sherrinford said, his voice clipped. He jerked his head towards his satchel, still hanging on his shoulder. 

Sherlock opened it. Inside was a small cooler. He lifted the lid, held it open as Sherrinford set the container in, shut the lid. 

Sherrinford shut the canister, slipped his hand out of the rubber glove. There was a sparkle in his eye, a mischievous light that reminded Sherlock suddenly, achingly, of his youth. 

"Now," Sherrinford said. "Let's get the hell out of here before anyone realizes we're not taking samples, we're taking the whole damn thing." 

They went back out into the hallway, still eerily deserted. 

_Too easy, too easy,_ Sherlock thought, tensing. It didn't matter that Sherrinford apparently had the appropriate credentials to be in here, this was one of the most secure compounds in the country. The fact that they'd been allowed this far without anyone so much as stopping to double check their identification—

"Stop." 

He froze. The voice had come from behind them, authoritative, crisp. The sound of footsteps, approaching. Combat boots, military grade. The hushed, metallic click of a gun. 

"We are authorized to be here," Sherrinford said, calm. He stood steadily next to Sherlock, hands half raised in a nonthreatening gesture. 

"Identification." 

"In my pocket," Sherlock said.

Sherrinford glanced at him. If there were some signal in his expression, something to be deduced, he could not find it. 

"Turn around. Slowly," the man behind them said. 

They turned. The soldier holding his gun on them was young, muscular, tanned. There was nothing nervous or unsettled in his demeanor, no immediate weakness to play on. 

"Oh," Sherrinford said. There was dismay in his voice, a crack in his steady veneer that was coming at entirely the wrong time. 

The soldier smiled. 

Something had passed between them, Sherlock realized. Something unpleasant. 

"You've made this easy for me," the soldier said. "Thank you. The last one took off his own thumb to prevent this very thing." 

"RUN!" Sherrinford shouted, and the raw, naked fear in his voice galvanized something in Sherlock. Sherrinford bolted for the elevator. Sherlock moved to block the soldier's path, was instead picked up as though he were nothing but a child's toy, flung aside with a careless flick of the man's wrist. 

His head cracked against the wall and he saw stars. 

Sherrinford had reached the elevator, was fumbling his key card against the reader. The soldier had lowered his gun, was advancing with something small gripped in his hand, some kind of narrow metal object. 

His brother had screamed for him, once, and Sherlock had frozen up, had sat numb and immobile while he was taken. 

He staggered to his feet, vision swimming, took off at a stumbling run towards the man advancing on Sherrinford. He hit him low, a tackle targeted at his knees, and they both went down, shoes squeaking against the floor.

He had his hand on the man's service revolver, holstered at his side, and he pulled it free just as a strong hand wrapped around his throat, cutting off his oxygen. His perspective lurched as the man threw him again, his jacket tearing as he skidded against the floor. 

The man returned his attention to Sherrinford, advanced towards him once more.

"Stop," Sherlock said, sitting up, cocking the weapon. 

The man did not so much as glance in his direction. 

"Sherlock, don't—" Sherrinford said, and Sherlock pulled the trigger. 

He hit the man in the upper back, and he lurched. Kept walking. Sherlock fired again. The man stumbled, went to his knees, tipped face down into the ground.

Something was hissing, the air was filling with a chemical smell that made his eyes water, his nose gush. He gasped, vision blurring. The gun slipped out of his hands. 

Hands had him by the shoulders, hauling him to his feet. 

"Close your eyes," Sherrinford said. "Try not to breathe." 

They staggered towards the elevator, slipped inside. Sherlock opened his eyes and looked at the man lying on the floor. He stirred, sat up. 

His vision slid out of focus and he swiped at his eyes, stared. The man on the ground was not the same man he'd been struggling with. He was larger, broader, his face inhuman and cold. He smiled as the doors slid shut.

"His blood is toxic," Sherrinford said. He was breathing hard, his fingers white around the strap of his satchel. 

"Yes," Sherlock said. Blinked. Groaned. His face felt like it was on fire. "I see that." He took a shuddering breath, coughed, pressed his face into his coatsleeve. "Who was he?"

"Not a he," Sherrinford said. His eyes were clear, his breathing untroubled. "An it. A bounty hunter, of sorts. Not from around here." 

"Alien?" Sherlock asked, and coughed again. The elevator was rising, rising, rising.

"Yes," Sherrinford said. "It's been hunting me. Me and others who know what I know. Who have access to what I do. Someone tipped him off. He knew to intercept us here." 

"Thumb," Sherlock said. "He said something about a thumb." 

"He can be anyone. He can get in anywhere. But only my thumbprint will access the sample. Mine and a small handful of other people who have clearance."

The doors opened.

"You'll have to walk out of here on your own," Sherrinford said. His voice was low, urgent. "Can you do that? I can't support you. If anyone stops to question us, it's over." 

Sherlock gasped in another breath, nodded. He straightened up, stepped out into the hallway.

*

"State your purpose." 

John groaned, pulled the phone away from his ear. 

It had seemed like a good idea while he was dialing. At least, it hadn't seemed like a terrible idea. But now, hearing Wiggins' flat voice on the other end of the line, he wondered just what the hell he'd been thinking. 

Clearly, the need for caffeine had reached critical levels. 

"It's John Watson," he said. 

"Oh," Wiggins said. 

There was a long pause. 

"Are you recording this?" John asked. "Turn it off." 

"Yeah. It's off," Wiggins said. 

"Wiggins." 

A heavy sigh. The sound of rummaging and rustling. "You are officially no longer being recorded." 

"Thank you," he said. "Look. I need—" 

"Lost him again, have you?" 

"What? No—" 

"Haven't heard from him. Have you tried West Virginia? I hear there were unverified reports of a downed craft—" 

"No—what? No—look he's not in West Virginia. I haven't lost him. This isn't—it's not to do with him at all." 

"No need to bite my head off." 

"Can you just—" 

There was a muffled rustling, and then Anderson's voice piped up. "Agent Watson, what can we do for you?" 

"Erm," John said.

"Sherlock's gone missing," Wiggins offered. 

"No, he hasn't," John snapped. "Look. Some time ago, you boys mentioned that you'd done some digging into Moriarty Pharmaceuticals." 

"Go on," Wiggins said, sounding interested. 

"This case we're working on," John said, dropping his voice, looking around. No one was paying him any mind. "It's a little—well. Weird." 

"Well, weird is sort of your area," Anderson said. He chuckled, then quickly sobered. "Ah, go on." 

"I'm interested in a network of research clinics that Moriarty owns," he said. 

"These wouldn't happen to be the recently firebombed clinics you're referring to?" Wiggins asked slyly.

"Yep. Yes. Those," John said, not even bothering to be surprised. He had no real idea where the three of them got their information and, frankly, wasn't sure he wanted to know. He doubted it was through legal means. 

"What kind of information do you need?" Raz had picked up the phone as well, adding his voice to the fray. 

"Anything at all you can find out about what kind of work Moriarty was investing in with those clinics. And I mean—what they were really doing. Not the nice summary from their website." 

"You want all the dirt," Raz said. "I like it. Sherlock's rubbing off on you." 

"We'll take a look," Anderson said.

"Thanks," he said. He cleared his throat, suddenly awkward. He had rarely had cause to interact with the three of them outside of Sherlock's presence. 

"We'll call you when we know more," Anderson said. He hung up. 

*

Horrifyingly, they had to pull over twice so that Sherlock's stomach could make efforts to violently empty itself into the weed-choked grass along the highway. 

His stomach didn't have much to divest itself of. John had brought him coffee the previous morning, and he'd consumed that and half a bagel while engaging in exhaustive mental calisthenics in the hopes of convincing John to visit a UFO crash site. Then Lestrade had called, and they'd driven to Philadelphia, and—

Had that only been twenty-four hours ago? 

Entire lifetimes had been rewritten in those twenty-four hours. 

In any case, lack of substantial stomach contents had certainly not stopped his wretched transport from attempting to shake itself to pieces. He was trembling as he picked his way back up the embankment towards the car. 

"It's the blood," Sherrinford said, watching him with a detached and critical eye. "Prolonged exposure, anything more than a few seconds really, is fatal." 

Sherlock sagged into the passenger seat, tugged the door shut behind him. The windowglass was cool against his flushed and heated forehead. 

He thought he ought to be curious. Really, this was the sort of thing he was meant to care about. 

But his mouth was dry and his eyes burned, the skin on his face felt paper-thin and inflamed. 

"You'll be all right," Sherrinford said. Matter of fact. He pulled back onto the highway.

"Sure about that?" Sherlock managed to groan. His stomach gave a tentative lurch, and he forcibly pushed the feeling aside.

"If you weren't, you'd already be dead," he said. "As I said, prolonged exposure is fatal. Turns human blood to a consistency resembling cottage cheese." 

Sherlock's stomach gave another lurch, this one far more persistent. He groaned. What the hell was wrong with him? This was _fascinating._ He should be insisting on stopping off somewhere so he could take samples of his own blood and get a good look at the reaction under a microscope. 

"Cold slows the reaction," Sherrinford said. He studied Sherlock thoughtfully for a moment, then leaned over and turned on the air conditioning. 

Sherlock sighed.

Sherrinford snickered.

He swiveled in his chair, startled. Sherrinford was gripping the steering wheel with both hands, hunched over in his seat, clearly fighting off fit of giggles. His eyes had crinkled up at the corners. 

In spite of the queasy feeling in his stomach—not helped _at all_ by his mind palace helpfully supplying him with a visual of congealed, jellied blood oozing sluggishly through his own veins—Sherlock felt his own lip quirk in amusement. A sound escaped him. Possibly an aborted laugh. 

Sherrinford's shoulders jerked with aborted laughter.

And then they were both giggling. Sherlock laugh-groaning even as his stomach roiled. 

Oh, Sherlock thought, with an odd giddy swoop in his chest. Oh. 

John was not going to know what had hit him when they rolled back into town. 

He sobered at that thought, looked out the window, watched the scenery roll by. They were not going to the airport. He could wave around as many badges as he liked, but there was no way that the contents of the cooler they carried was making it through airport security. 

"That man," he said, finally. "Thing. Bounty hunter. Whatever. He's not just going to give up." 

"No," Sherrinford agreed. "He likely attempted to head us off at the airport. Failing that, he'll try to draw me out some other way." 

Sherlock swallowed, nodded, looked back out the window. The scenery rolled by, green trees under gray drizzly skies, dreary, monotonous. There were miles to cover and hours to go before he was back in D.C.

*

After spending what felt like lifetimes cooped up inside of the Philadelphia field office, it felt good to be outside in the damp air. 

His clothes felt stiff, his skin oily and sour. An uncomfortable stubble had cropped up on his face. The weak shower back in his motel room beckoned like a temptress. 

It would have to wait. 

The day had already begun to bleed into night, leaving John with the uncomfortable sensation of feeling out of time, adrift. It had been full dark when he'd first entered the building with Hatherley in tow. He'd worked through the night, the morning, the rest of the day. 

His head throbbed.

The cup of coffee he'd shared in the basement with Sherlock seemed as though it could be years in the past. As though it had never really happened at all. 

Gregson had taken a call that he thought could be credible, someone claiming to have spotted Dzundza skulking about an abandoned warehouse in a rough part of town. 

It hadn't seemed particularly credible to John. Surely Dzundza, if he'd had the means to effectively fool the CIA into thinking him dead, _and_ the ability to pull off a multi-state killing spree in a matter of only a few days, would be doing something far more productive with his time than lingering suspiciously near run-down buildings. 

But it was a reason to step away from the desk and the research and the paperwork, a reason to take his mind off of worrying about Sherlock. 

"Might as well check it out," he'd agreed. "See if there's anything to it." 

He was glad for the fresh air. 

He rode with Gregson in an unmarked SUV. The city was unfamiliar to him, and the sights began to blur together as Gregson navigated towards their destination. 

His phone rang. 

He pulled it out of his pocket, hoping to see Sherlock's name lighting up the display. 

It was Wiggins. 

"What do you have?" he asked, not bothering with a greeting. Even at the best of times, Wiggins wasn't one for small talk. Anderson, on the other hand, would talk your ear off given half a chance. 

"Something. Nothing concrete, mind," Wiggins said. "Nothing you could prove in court."

"I don't care about that. What are they up to?" 

"There are rumors that some of these clinics that Moriarty funds, while they purport to be doing clinical trials, stem cell research, disease studies—are actually a front for other kinds of activities. Namely, spearheading efforts at human cloning." 

John shifted in his seat, conscious of Gregson's curious glance. He pressed the phone closer to his ear, spoke in a low voice. "Credible rumors?" 

"Wouldn't be wasting your time with them if I didn't think so," Wiggins said.

Cloning. Well, that—that made a certain degree of sense. It wasn't impossible. Unethical, certainly. But not impossible. 

"Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission," John murmured. Attempts to perform that kind of research openly would be blocked. They'd be mired in red tape for years. But if it were done in secret, if credible results could be revealed after it had already been done—

"The US military is up to their eyeballs in this," Wiggins added.

John felt a stab of reflexive defensiveness, tamped it down. He'd seen what his own government was capable of. He'd pulled Sherlock out of Baskerville himself. 

"Probably building a clone army as we speak," Wiggins added conspiratorially. "It's what I'd do."

"Right," John said. "Look, thanks for this. I appreciate it. I'll be in touch." 

He ended the call, looked up. Met Gregson's curious gaze, tried not to appear too defensive. 

"Colleague," he said, by means of explanation. 

They rode in silence for a while longer. John noticed the streets growing emptier, the storefronts growing more unkempt. 

"This is the place," Gregson said, pulling over.

"We go in quiet," John said. "If he is here, I don't want to spook him into running. I'll take the front, you go around back." 

On the ride over he'd felt sluggish, groggy, but now a flood of adrenaline had him on a knife's edge. His blood sang in his veins as he drew his service revolver. 

The building was dark, crumbling, deserted. The air was heavy, musty, stale with disuse. 

He moved slowly, carefully, sweeping through the building, clearing each room. His shoes crunched over broken glass.

"He's not here," John said, finally, holstering his weapon, looking across a wide empty workspace at Gregson, who had come in through the opposite door. He breathed out, a rush of air, uncertain whether to be relieved or disappointed not to have come upon the Dzundza's hulking form in the darkness. 

The Golem, he'd been called. And in the photographs he indeed looked as though he'd been formed of clay, vaguely misshapen, proportions all wrong. 

"Well, it was worth a look," Gregson said. 

Somewhere behind John, a door creaked open. Footsteps, echoing through the empty room. 

John pulled his gun out in one smooth motion, turned and crouched. There was someone in the shadows, someone who had just stepped in from the street. 

"FBI," he said, to the advancing figure. "Put your hands up and step forward into the light. Slowly." 

The figure did as asked, advancing forward at an unhurried clip. The light from John's flashlight caught against the edges of his distinctive face.

"Sherlock," John breathed, shoulders sagging with relief. He put his gun back in its holster, stepped forward. A smile struggled to find purchase on his tired face.

Sherlock looked at him, his face schooled carefully blank, and of _course_ he'd choose to make a dramatic entrance. 

"How did you find us here?" he asked, but of course the answer was that it was _Sherlock,_ he could find anyone. Of course he'd know. 

"Did you find anything?" Sherlock asked, dodging the question. Odd, that, he rarely missed a chance to show off. He wasn't wearing his coat, John realized. He'd traded it for something shorter, nondescript. A plain workman's jacket, rough material. 

"This is my partner, Agent Holmes," John said, half-turning back towards Gregson. 

He was looking straight at Gregson when the little red circle appeared in the middle of the man's chest. His mouth contorted into a small 'o' of surprise, and then, only then, did the crack of the gunshot echo through the big empty space. 

"GET DOWN!" John shouted, his training taking over, some part of his brain recognizing the threat before he was consciously aware. He turned back towards Sherlock, meaning to tackle the great tall bastard to the ground, and was frozen up by the sight of a gun in Sherlock's hand. 

There was a little curl of smoke rising up from the muzzle. Behind him, Gregson made a muffled sound and dropped to the ground like a sack of grain. 

John's blood roared in his ears. 

"Sherlock," he said, his voice coming out slow and stupid, even to himself. His hand tightened on his flashlight. He held the other out, beseeching or calming, he did not know. 

Sherlock was looking at him with a curious expression, as if he'd never seen him before. 

His mind hurtled in a thousand directions. Psychotic break? Drugs? Some kind of setup? What the _hell_ was going on? 

He drew his gun, leveled it, his hands steady even as his resolve shook. 

Sherlock stepped forward, quick steps, purposeful. Brought himself right up against John so that the muzzle of John's gun buried itself in the front of his rough jacket. 

The jacket. The jacket was wrong. It was entirely, completely wrong.

His breathing was slow and even, as if his heartrate hadn't jumped at all while he was pulling the trigger. As if it hadn't affected him. 

"Sherlock—" John tried again. 

Sherlock grabbed his wrist and _twisted,_ the strength inhuman, indescribable. The gun clattered uselessly to the ground. 

John was shoved roughly to the floor, his palms scraping across rough wood. He caught his balance lurched back to his feet, rushed at Sherlock. 

Sherlock punched him in the face. Pain bloomed red and he dropped, reeling, stunned, his head cracking against the floor. He opened his eyes, rolled onto his back, the ceiling swimming in and out of focus. Hot, coppery blood was on his face, in his mouth, tickling at the back of his throat. He coughed, gagged. 

"Sher—" he tried. Gasping. 

Sherlock looked impassively down at him. Except he wasn't— he wasn't Sherlock any more.

It was Dzundza.

*

It was full dark by the time they made it back to D.C. 

Sherlock eschewed his apartment, knowing that anyone looking for them would almost certainly think to check there. Instead he checked into a modest motel outside the city limits, paid cash for a room with two beds, a bathroom, a small desk. A place to plan.

Sherrinford followed behind, went into the bathroom to wash up while Sherlock stretched his aching frame out on one of the narrow beds. 

He ought to call John, he thought.

John had sounded distressed, when they'd last spoken. He'd said that Hatherley had been killed. 

Sherlock's attentions had been elsewhere. Now, warm, relatively comfortable, not in any immediate peril, he let his mind worry over the facts of the case. 

Based on what Sherrinford had shared, he knew that Hatherley and his colleagues had been surreptitiously working to develop a vaccine against an alien pathogen. This violated a deal of some sort. Someone had found them out, and now they were being eliminated. Hence the firebombings. Clever, in a macabre sort of way, to disguise assassinations as the work of disgruntled radicals. No one thought twice about it. No one dug any deeper. 

Of course, there was the matter of Hatherley's wife, and her bizarre claims. 

Either Hatherley was crazy or his wife was a liar, Sherlock decided. Or, perhaps his wife was crazy and there was nothing whatsoever wrong with Hatherley. 

Doubtful, though. The man didn't even have any wedding photos. There was a difference between not caring to be photographed and an almost pathological avoidance of such. Such an extreme aversion indicated that there was some reason he didn't wish to be caught on camera. A specific reason.

What had John said, again? 

_This case is weird. Even for you._

Something unusual about the circumstances surrounding Hatherley's death, then. 

Curious, now, he rolled over, grabbed for his phone. As he picked it up, the screen lit with an incoming call. John. Convenient!

He flopped back against the pillow, lifted the phone to his ear. "John," he said. His voice was warmer than he'd intended, almost soft, fond. 

It surprised him, a bit, to realize how much he wanted to hear John's voice. 

"Yeah," John said. He sounded distracted, slightly nasally, not really like John at all. 

"Listen," Sherlock said. "The case you're working on, the research clinics. It goes much deeper than we thought. I—" 

"Yep," John said. His voice was flat, utterly devoid of any emotion. "I know." 

Was he irritated? Could Sherlock have managed to piss him off at some point over the course of the last day and a half? Generally, people found themselves pissed off at Sherlock after spending an extended period of time in his company, not out of it. 

He supposed he could try his hand at an apology, although that didn't seem particularly fair. He'd had a family emergency, after all. Surely it was forgivable, even expected, for one to remain out of touch for a bit of time when such situations arose.

"John," he tried again. "Is everything all—" 

"Nope," John said. 

There was a muffled scrabbling on the other end of the line. Someone breathed into the phone. 

"John?" 

Footsteps behind him, a slow approach. Sherrinford. Concerned. Questions furrowed into a crease in his forehead. 

Sherlock shook his head.

"John?" 

"I didn't really call to have a chat, Sherlock," John said. His voice tight. "I'm being held. The man who has me says he'll kill me if you don't give him what he wants." 

Sherlock blinked, his blood running cold. Cursed himself for not reading this in John's voice sooner. He'd been lazy. He'd been too absorbed in his own thoughts, in his own wants, to recognize what was right in front of him. 

He sat bolt upright on the little bed. His fingers tightened around the phone. 

"He wants the man you're with. And the thing you stole," John breathed in, his breath thick. Swollen nasal passages, as if he had a cold. Or had taken a blow to the face. 

It send a shock of anger through Sherlock, and he stood up, paced towards the window, whirled, stalked across the floor in the other direction. The room was too small to work up any kind of momentum, the walls close, claustrophobic. 

"Fine. Tell him I'm willing to negotiate." 

John laughed, that hard, angry sound that Sherlock had grown quite used to. "He says he has no interest in negotiating. This is a trade." 

"John—"

"Memorial Bridge. Bethseda. One hour," John said. "Those are the terms." 

He hung up. 

Sherlock pulled the phone away from his ear, stared at it. He turned towards Sherrinford, feeling slow, stunned, bewildered in a way that was wholly unfamiliar outside of chemical interference. 

"Your bounty hunter has my partner," he said. "He wants to make a trade." 

"Ah," Sherrinford said. He sat down on the couch. "Told you he'd find some way to try and draw me out." 

"We have to be at Memorial Bridge in an hour." 

Sherrinford blinked at him. "You do realize what's at stake here?" 

"Yes," Sherlock said. "I do." 

He found himself unable to hold his brother's gaze. He turned away, went towards the window, looked out at the dismal little parking lot. 

"Is there a way to kill it?" he asked. 

"Yes."

He nodded, turned back, steeled himself. Across the room, Sherrinford looked very young. For a moment, he was a child again, beseeching, needy, annoying. He shut his eyes. 

"Tell me," he said.

"You have to pierce the back of his neck." 

"That will kill anyone," he said, annoyed, eyes snapping back open. 

"Yes," Sherrinford agreed. "But it's the only way to kill him. It has to be quick. Precise. You've seen what his blood can do—the effect is amplified upon death. The entire body breaks down within minutes." 

"Would a bullet do the job?" 

Sherrinford shrugged. "Technically, yes. But the precision necessary to make that kind of shot from any distance—" 

"If I could arrange for a tactical team. Snipers. Would that work?" he was aware that his voice had risen, that he was very near to the kind of panic that he found loathsome in others. 

He'd been like that at twelve, standing in front of an empty house, sobbing to the police, clinging, desperate. The memory was sour, acidic, heavy and unwelcome in the pit of his stomach, and he forcibly pushed it away. He was not that child any longer. He was not helpless, not ruled by emotions. There was a problem in front of him and _he would solve it._

"In theory," Sherrinford said. "In theory, yes. But I'll have to get very close to him before he agrees to release your partner." 

Sherlock didn't speak for a long moment. 

He thought about John, leaning back in his chair in the office, scoffing as he'd gone on and on about the UFO sighting in West Virginia. He'd been teasing, Sherlock knew. There was never any real venom in it, not in any way that mattered. Had Lestrade not called, they'd have wound up taking the trip. 

"Oh," he breathed, and he looked up. 

Sherrinford tilted his head in silent question. 

"The crash. The UFO that supposedly crashed somewhere in West Virginia." 

Sherrinford shrugged. "I don't know, I don't really follow that kind of news." 

"It was him," Sherlock said. "He didn't crash, he _landed._ That's why no one can find it." He spun away from the window, stalked across the room, spun back. "Right after reports of a possible crash started rolling in, that's when the clinic attacks started." 

"So you think it's just parked out there?" 

Sherlock shrugged, suddenly feeling very tired, defeated. "I think… I think that no matter what I did, I was always going to get involved in this case."

Sherrinford opened his mouth to speak. Sherlock held up a hand, stopping him. 

"I need to make a call. We don't have much time." 

*

The Potomac was rain-swollen. John could hear the water roaring below. It was raining again, a slow, steady patter against the windshield.

The man beside him, if he could even be called a man, had not spoken a word since the deal had been arranged. 

They were parked at the edge of the bridge, engine off. The chill of the night air had begun to seep into the car. John clenched and unclenched his hands, tried to warm his frozen fingers. The blood on his face had dried; tacky, cold. 

Headlights pierced the foggy night across the way. John tensed. 

Sherlock had left on a _family emergency._ That's what he had said. What kind of family emergency put him in the position to be negotiating a hostage exchange? 

The headlights slowed in their approach, pulled to a stop at the other end of the bridge. He could not see the occupants of the car. 

"Out," the man said. 

John opened the door, stepped outside. A wet wind lashed against his face. 

The man gestured to him. He walked around the front of the car, stood beside him. Tried not to feel dwarfed by the strange, twisted height of him. 

He squinted through the rain as two figures approached. One of them was carrying something. 

His knees almost sagged with relief at the sight of Sherlock, his Sherlock, the real one, wrapped up in his coat, his stony pale face alert and watchful.

They stopped walking, regarded each other from several feet away. 

The man with Sherlock was Hatherley.

John squinted, looked sharply back up at Sherlock, who was still staring across the way with his own peculiar brand of single-minded intensity. Hatherley looked up, said something in a low tone, Sherlock nodded. 

"Show me," the man next to him said. His voice carried, cutting through the wind. 

The man with Sherlock, Hatherley, held up the bag he was holding, which, on further inspection, appeared to be some kind of hard-sided cooler. John could only hazard a guess, of course, but he supposed that whatever was inside was not the sort of thing one would want to bring to a picnic. 

"Show me," the man said again.

Hatherley opened the cooler, tilted it towards them. John could barely make out the contents—a jar of some kind. Something small. 

"Bring it," the man said. "Just you." 

Hatherley looked back at Sherlock. Something passed between them. 

John squinted against the rain, clenched his fist, awaited instruction. 

Hatherley began walking towards them, holding the cooler, taking slow, measured steps. 

"Go," the man said.

John began walking, one step, then two, then three. Hatherley drew closer. His heartbeat thudded in his ears, his back had tensed, awaiting a blow that didn't come. He took another step. 

He paused as he reached Hatherley. Blinked the rainwater out of his eyes, stared questioningly at the man. 

"It's all right," Hatherley said. "Just go." 

John nodded, kept walking. Fixed his eyes on Sherlock, standing at the edge of the bridge. Waiting. 

Sherlock tipped his head, ever-so-slightly, to the left. A signal of some kind. He wasn't alone. Thank _Christ._

John reached the edge of the bridge, within arm's length of Sherlock. Sherlock looked at him, wide-eyed, his gaze sliding across John's body, assessing him. He nodded. John nodded back, turned around. 

The man who'd taken him had been pinned by laser sights, red beads dancing across his chest. He looked down, grinned, looked back up. 

"Back of the neck," Sherlock said, his voice low, furious. "Back of the _neck._ " 

It made no sense to John. The man, ignoring the lights on his chest, took a step towards Hatherley, who'd frozen. 

Someone fired. 

The man stumbled, did not go down. The shot was square in the chest. Certainly fatal. The impact of the high-caliber round should have knocked him flat. 

Green liquid dribbled from the wound. He took another step. 

"THE NECK!" Sherlock shouted, a shocking raw thread of pure panic in his voice. He started onto the bridge. 

Hatherley had taken something out of his pocket, a narrow bit of metal. As the man closed his enormous fists around him, he swung out, stabbing wildly at the back of his neck with it. 

The man stumbled, lurched sideways. They crashed together against the railing, the sniper lights dancing on his chest, no one daring to take another shot while the two were so close. 

For a moment, time seemed to freeze. John watched the two men grapple, the cooler swinging by its handle between them, still gripped in Hatherley's hand. Then they both disappeared over the edge. 

"Sherrinford!" Sherlock shouted, rushing forward. 

John ran with him, matched him stride for stride, even while his shocked brain was still trying to process what he'd just heard. 

They bolted for the railing together, breath steaming in the cold, leaning over to peer into the blackness below. 

There were a hundred things he wanted to do at once. And there, standing in the damp air, shoulder-to-shoulder with Sherlock, he did precisely none of them. 

He was frozen, shocked at the sight of Sherlock's chest heaving with exertion, at the terrible crushed blankness of his face, and oh, oh God, the name that had been ripped from his mouth. 

What in the _hell_ was going on?

Sherlock hadn't moved, his glove hands gripping the railing, his eyes flitting to and fro, searching for movement. Beneath them, the water roared. 

Sherlock tensed up, his muscles coiling, and John grabbed his arm without thinking, fingers dragging against the wool of his coat. Sherlock turned, met his eyes, his own pale ones wide and so very shocked. 

"Don't," John said, and in his mind it played out, Sherlock leaping heedlessly over the edge, coat flapping behind him, disappearing soundlessly into the waters below. Not surfacing.

Sherlock's arm remained taut under his hand for a moment longer before loosening, his shoulders slumping. 

There were voices, now, converging. The team that Sherlock had doubtlessly arranged, put into place. They'd be at the bridge in seconds, taking control of the scene. 

He thought of Hatherley, his pale eyes, his nonchalant drawling demeanor. It had irritated him, reminded him of Sherlock in unflattering ways. 

Clones, Wiggins had said. Human cloning. Experimentation. That was an avenue of explanation, but—but there had to be a source. They were clones of _someone._ Had Hatherley and the others like him been carefully crafted using the genes of Sherrinford Holmes? 

He might have scoffed at the idea, once. But now it seemed terribly, horribly possible. 

"Sherlock," he said, because the team was almost there, flashlights bobbing in the dark as they ran forward. He was certain that, if nothing else, Sherlock would not want to be caught unawares, blankfaced, wide-eyed, stunned.

Sherlock startled at the sound of his name, blinked, looked at John. His unfocused eyes sharpened, honed in. 

"Are you all right?" he did not so much ask as demand, his hands coming up. The leather of his gloves was cool against John's face, cupping his cheeks, prodding at the tender bruise on his temple. "John. Are you all right?" 

John could have laughed. The question was absurd, coming on the heels of what had just happened. 

_Nothing else matters to me,_ Sherlock had said once, in the close quiet of a darkened motel room, his words punctuated by the low rumble of an oncoming storm. His brother, the answer to the mystery that had plagued him for the majority of his life.

And what it looked like—what it very much looked like—was that Sherlock had just traded his own brother's life. For John.

_Why would you do that?_ he wanted to ask, wanted to grab Sherlock by the shoulders and shake him until the world turned right side up again, until the expression on his face started making sense. _Why would you even take that risk?_

Instead, he spoke calmly, authoritatively. "Sherlock. Your team is here. We're going to need search and rescue. Divers." _Someone to drag the river,_ he left unsaid. 

"I—" Sherlock said, his hands still pressed, cool and firm, against John's face. He blinked, removed his hands. As John had hoped, the presentation of an immediate problem to solve clicked something in his brain and he came back online, his shoulders straightening, his gaze focusing. He nodded, sharply, and he was Sherlock Holmes again, armored and untouchable. 

Exactly what he needed to be, in the moment. 

John watched him go, coat fanning out behind him as he began barking orders at the arriving agents. He finally gave in and let his own knees buckle, gripping on to the cold railing for support as he took a deep breath. 

*

Sherlock stood on the riverbank as the morning sun began to edge over the horizon, throwing weak shafts of light over the sorry tableau. 

There was a boat out on the Potomac, staffed with agents in FBI windbreakers, dragging the river. They worked quietly, efficiently. He could find no fault with their methods. 

They had not found anything. 

_You should have been_ watching _him._

He blinked, looked down. There was mud on his shoes. His feet had long since gone numb. His hands were cold in their leather gloves. 

The grass behind him rustled. He did not turn. He would know John's footsteps anywhere. 

John stepped up beside him, not speaking, joining him in staring out at the river. Their shoulders brushed. He was uncomfortably aware of John's breathing. 

"I'm sorry," John said, finally. His voice was low.

Sherlock blinked, looked over at him. "Why would you be sorry?" 

John made a face, the kind of bewildered face he sometimes made when Sherlock had missed something obvious. "Because—um. Just—I'm sorry. I'm sorry this happened." 

Sherlock had run alternate scenarios though his mind, watched them play out. Some of those scenarios ended with John dead, crumpled on the bridge or vanished off the side into the swollen river. 

He had braced himself to leap into the water after Sherrinford, even knowing it was foolish and unlikely to lead to anything other than drowning with his own stupid coat wrapped around his neck. John had put a gentle hand on his arm and said "don't" and Sherlock hadn't. 

He knew, without having to think too hard on the matter, that if it had been John plunging over the railing and into the water below, he'd have been off the edge after him without hesitation. 

He found himself not quite ready to dissect that thought, what it might mean. There was a bruise on John's temple. He'd cleaned himself up some, but evidence of his struggle remained. The bounty hunter had bloodied his nose. 

"I—" he said, unaware that he'd been about to speak at all. It troubled him, this tendency his body had to act without consulting him. 

"Sherlock," John said, his voice pained, but determined. "Look. That—that man. The one you think is your brother. I've seen him before." 

Sherlock blinked, turned to face him fully. 

"There's something more going on here," John said. "I don't think he—" he took a deep breath, looked away as if unnerved by Sherlock's intent stare. "I'm not sure he was who he said he was." 

"Who else could he have been?" Sherlock asked, not wanting to acknowledge the strange fragile thing that had ignited deep in his chest. 

"I think—" John began, but was cut off by shouting from the river. 

Sherlock pivoted around, watched as the agents aboard the boat struggled with something just below the surface. 

"We've got something!" one of them shouted. 

Sherlock gathered himself, squared his shoulders, drew his coat around him. He picked his way carefully up the muddy riverbank. There was a moment of silence, and then he heard John's footsteps behind him. 

The body was transferred from boat to an ambulance that waited, lights dark. Sherlock waited patiently, quietly, as the agents around him did what needed to be done.

Finally, he pushed his way through, unzipped the heavy black body bag with steady fingers. John was behind him, not speaking, just breathing. Comforting. 

He pulled the bag away, looked down at his brother's face. 

Sherrinford was ghost-pale, his dark hair matted against his skull. His eyes were closed, face slack. There was a cut on his forehead, likely from striking debris in the river. Sherlock reached out his hand, pressed the tip of his index finger against icy cold skin. 

He swallowed, drew his hand back. 

"Please," he said. He turned around, looked at John, who was staring at him with an utterly unreadable expression. "Will you examine the body?" 

"Sherlock," John said, shaking his head. 

"I don't—" Sherlock cleared his throat, looked back at the corpse of the man he'd been laughing with earlier that day. "I don't trust anyone else. Please. I need you to examine the body and tell me what you find." 

I'll believe you, he didn't say. If you tell me it wasn't him, I'll believe you. Because I want to believe. 

John pursed his lips, nodded. A short, sharp nod. 

He stepped forward, bent to look at the body. Sherlock stood close, trying not to hover. 

"Dr. Hatherley," John said, his voice quiet. "Could have been this man's twin." 

It was not at all what he'd been expecting to hear. He reared back, blinking. "What?" 

"Him, and at least two others," John said. "The doctors killed in the Ohio and Virginia clinic bombings. There's—a lot has happened. And I don't know if this is your brother or not, but the man who took me is the same man who killed Hatherley." 

Sherlock tore his gaze away from John, looked back at the body. He stared, tried to see something other than what he'd wanted to see. 

The body shifted. 

He took a step forward, was stopped by John's hand on his forearm. 

"I've seen this before," John said. "It happened with Hatherley, too. Don't get too close."

Sherrinford had begun to bubble, to hiss, to ooze. His slim frame collapsed in on itself, melting away. 

Sherlock stared. 

"It releases something into the air," John said, still tugging him backwards. "Something toxic. Come on, get back. It'll dissipate, but don't get close to it." 

They stumbled back, John guiding him with steady hands. 

"That reaction," John said. "It happened a lot sooner after Hatherley died. I—" 

"The cold," Sherlock said, speaking slowly, his mind lighting up with realization. "It slows the reaction." 

"You know what this is?" John asked. 

"It's alien," he said. 

John muttered something, something that sounded suspiciously like _of course._

Sherlock ignored him. His thoughts whirled. At the Baskerville base. Sherrinford had pulled him to safety after he'd shot the—the bounty hunter. He hadn't reacted at all, even though he'd been exposed to the same substance that Sherlock had.

He pulled his arm free, turned back towards the agents still combing the area along the riverbank. "The cooler. Has anyone found it? He was holding a cooler when he went over the edge." 

"It hasn't turned up," John said, his voice soft. "The current took it, it's probably with the other body." 

"We need to find it," he said. 

"Sherlock—" 

Sherlock's phone buzzed in his pocket. He startled, reached for it. Stared down at a photo text from an unknown number. 

"What—?" John asked, catching sight of something in his expression. He craned his neck to peer at the screen. 

It was Sherrinford. Or Hatherley. Or—whoever. Wearing a lab coat, gloves. It was a poor angle, clearly snapped surreptitiously. The timestamp on the photograph put it as the previous afternoon. 

The phone hummed in his hand again, another text. 

Another photograph. This one the nondescript exterior of a clinic. 

"There's more," Sherlock breathed. He pulled up his internet browser, googled the name of the clinic. Smiled in triumph when he found it. "It's right here in Maryland."

"Come on," John said, his hand back on Sherlock's arm again, somehow warm even through gloves and wool. "Let's go." 

*

The clinic doors were shut, locked. Lights off. No signs of activity inside.

"Strange," John said. He looked down at his watch. It was just after nine. 

Sherlock stepped back from the entrance, stood on the sidewalk, studying the building. The morning sun played against the angles of his face. He looked haggard, tired. Grim. 

"Maybe someone tipped them off," John said. "I'd run too, probably." 

Sherlock nodded slowly, looking troubled. He glanced around, eyes skimming across the nearby buildings. 

"The work," he said.

"Hm?" 

"He might have run to preserve his own life, but from what Sher—from what the other one told me, it's not just their lives at risk. It's their work." He frowned looked back at the building. "The bounty hunter, your Golem, isn't just killing them. He's destroying their work. He wouldn't leave this place untouched. And they wouldn’t leave it unprotected." 

Sherlock whirled away from the building, his coat flapping behind him. He walked purposefully towards the storefront next door, which had a disused, abandoned air. Incomprehensible graffiti had been spray painted over a realty sign. 

"What are you—?" John cut himself off with a sigh as he watched Sherlock efficiently pick the lock, slipping inside with a furtive glance at his surroundings. 

He shut his eyes, tipped his head back. His nose throbbed. He needed a shower and about twelve hours of sleep.

He followed Sherlock into the building. 

"What are you doing?" he hissed, hurrying to catch up. "If you were going to break in anywhere, I'd assumed you'd pick the clinic. You know. The place we're actually concerned about." 

"John," Sherlock said, pausing, scanning the room. "How many abandoned buildings would you say we've had cause to search in the in the course of an investigation?" 

John blew out a frustrated breath. "I don't know. A lot. Yeah, with you, it seems we're always finding reason to poke around in places we have absolutely no business being." 

"They all have a certain look to them, wouldn't you say?" 

He shrugged, clenched his fists. "I don't know. Yes. Sure. They all look abandoned." 

"Wouldn’t you say that this one, in particular, looks a little _too_ abandoned?" 

"Is there such a thing?" John looked around, wondering, not for the first time, just what it was that Sherlock's keen eyes picked out of the shadows. 

"The other storefronts in the area are well-maintained. This one is so decrepit it's practically falling down. It might as well have a sign on the front that says 'don't look too closely,' don't you think?" 

John swiped a thick film of dust off of one filthy window. "No one's been in here." 

"You're seeing exactly what they want you to see," Sherlock said. "You have to look, really look. Scenes can be staged, appearances can be faked. But dust—" he was half crouched now, studying the ground, running his fingers along one stained wall. "Dust is eloquent." 

He made a pleased sound, sat back on his heels. John crossed the room to stand behind him. 

There was a spot on the floor where the dust had been wiped clean, fanning out from the wall. As if something had been repeatedly dragged across it.

Sherlock stood, pressed against the wall, his fingers prodding and testing the tattered wallpaper. There was a clicking noise, and a door creaked open, the seams well-hidden by the rotting paper. 

Sherlock smiled, a quick flash of teeth in the darkness. He pulled the door open, the bottom scraping against the floor. 

"After you," he said. 

John shook his head, bemused. "Unbelievable." 

"Yes, I do rather think I am." 

He snorted, which hurt his nose. He went through the door, down a narrow hallway. The next door he met was clean, neat, at utter odds from the decrepit room they'd just left behind.

He tried to picture where they were in the building.

"This is right next to the clinic," he said. "They probably have an access door from that side, too." 

"Yes," Sherlock breathed, and pushed through the door. 

They stopped. Stared. 

The room was small, clean. There was a counter running along one wall, computers and microscopes and test tubes littering the surface. 

In the center of the room were three glass tanks, enormous, almost like aquariums but for the green liquid bubbling within. Something moved inside one of the tanks. Something alive. Something disturbingly human. 

"My God," John said. 

*

Sherlock's eyes caught on a flurry of motion against the far wall. A man in a lab coat, surgical mask over his mouth and nose. Dark hair. 

Sherrinford. Hatherley. Whoever the hell he really was. 

"You're not in any danger," Sherlock said. He shut the door behind him. 

The man nodded, approached tentatively, pulling his mask down. Sherrinford's face, so familiar in such a short time. No recognition in his eyes, no warmth. 

Had Sherrinford been warm? He couldn't recall. 

"What the hell…?" John murmured. He'd looked up at the doctor, looked away. His gaze was drawn to the tanks, to the body curled within. An adult male, going by the size. The figure shifted, pressing against the glass, his face briefly visible through the viscous green fluid. Sherrinford's face. 

"The others are dead," Sherlock said.

"Yes," the doctor agreed. "I heard." He looked towards the door, then back at them. "I'm impressed you found me. Although, given your reputation, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised." 

"You know who I am?" 

He laughed, stripped off his latex gloves, tossed them in a nearby garbage can. "Everyone knows who you are, Agent Holmes." 

"You've been switching places," John said, pulling himself away from the tank, crossing the room to stand beside Sherlock once more. "Swapping. For months. Years, even." 

"We all have a job to do," he said mildly. "We all focus on different components. Pieces of the whole. Sometimes it's necessary for us to trade off, to share our findings. Our appearance makes it easy." 

"You're not human," Sherlock said. If he was hoping to shock the man, it was unsuccessful. 

"Not exactly, no," he said. 

"What are you?" 

"A copy," he said. "Very close to the original source, but with certain—adjustments." 

"And you're continuing these—adjustments?" John asked, looking again towards the tanks, his face twisted in some kind of horrified fascination. 

"Of course," he said. "We are at war." 

"With who?" 

"You know who." 

"No," Sherlock said, looking around. His brother's face, everywhere. "I don't know anything. Start talking, or I'll kill you myself." 

"Sherlock," John said.

"Back of the neck," he said. "That's how it works, right?" 

The man blinked. Sherrinford's pale eyes, so similar to Sherlock's own. "We were tasked with creating a vaccine."

"A vaccine," John said. "A vaccine against what?" 

"A very real threat," he said. "One we've been specifically engineered to be immune to." 

"You're cloning yourself," Sherlock said. He looked back at the tanks. "Building an army. Of sorts." 

"We have a natural resistance to what is to come," he agreed. "If we are unsuccessful in developing a vaccine, the human race will be destroyed. We have a natural immunity. It only stands to reason that we should inherit what's left." 

"My brother," Sherlock said. "The man I—the man I thought was my brother. He was one of you." 

"You could say we are all part of him," the man said.

"He said you were trying to help." 

"He would have said anything to get what he wanted," he said. 

Sherlock looked down at the ground, breathed. It was true, he supposed. And he couldn't quite hold it against him. He'd have done the same, if the stakes were high enough. 

He supposed the stakes _had_ been high enough. 

"We are trying to help," the man offered. "But at the same time, we are seeking to help ourselves." 

"What happened to the original source?" Sherlock asked, staring hard at the man's face, the familiar features. 

The man didn't answer, simply went over to one of the tanks, checked the readings on a monitor. 

"The original source. My brother. The person you _copied._ What happened to him?" 

The lights flickered out. The room hummed as machinery shut down, computers, monitors, pumps. 

John locked eyes with him from across the room, alarmed. 

"He's here," the doctor said, and there was a heavy resignation in his voice. "It's over, of course. He already has what he was looking for. You saw to that." 

"Why not run?" Sherlock asked, shaking his head. "If you knew he'd come here." 

"What would be the point in that?" 

The man who came in through the door had made no efforts at disguise. He was tall, warped, twisted. His long arms stretched forward, his face stony. 

The doctor, the man with Sherrinford's face and his pale blue eyes, stumbled back at the sight of him, his calm acceptance bleeding away. 

John drew his gun.

"No!" Sherlock said, holding out his hand. "Don't shoot, John, the blood is toxic." 

He scanned the room again, noting and dismissing potential weapons.

The room had begun to fill with smoke. A dull roar behind them—the Golem must have set the clinic ablaze before finding his way into the laboratory. 

Sherlock picked up the microscope, swung it. It connected with the side of the Golem's face, didn't slow his advancing progress in the slightest. 

He drew his weapon, ignored John's shout of protest, flung himself onto his enormous back. 

The Golem spun around, whirling him against the wall. He scrabbled to hold on, sliding his gun up against the man's neck, trying to find the right spot at the base of his skull. 

Someone was shrieking, unholy inhuman sounds. The doctor, the man who both was and wasn't Sherrinford, had gone up in flames. The Golem had him in his hands, picked him up like he was a child, hurled him, screaming, into the wall. 

Sherlock's hand was jostled out of position, his weapon firing uselessly at the ceiling. The Golem swung him around again and he dropped to the floor. One of the tanks erupted in a spray of jagged glass, liquid gushing free, a limp humanoid form flopping ungracefully to the tile floor. 

The entire room had gone up, flames licking at the walls, the ceiling. It was burning hotter and faster than any fire Sherlock had ever seen. He doubted the cause could be entirely natural. 

"SHERLOCK!" John, shouting his name, coughing, crawling towards him through broken glass and puddles of sticky liquid. 

The doctor had stopped screaming. Sherlock had lost sight of the Golem in the smoke. 

There were arms around his chest, then, encircling him, and he flailed out wildly before realizing it was John, John pulling him close, John shielding him with his own body as another tank erupted over them. 

He slipped, struggling to find purchase on the floor. John, behind him, guiding him, nudging and prodding and pushing towards the door. There was a piece of glass in his knee. Blood ran hot and wet down his leg. 

"John," he said, not aware he planned on speaking at all. He was nonsensical, his mind palace misfiring, nothing but smoke and fire and light and Sherrinford had screamed for him and he'd been unable to help, he'd been helpless, he'd been paralyzed just like this—

"Come on," John's voice, close to his ear, the familiar smell of him in his nostrils, briefly overpowering the smoke and ash. "Come on, I've got you." 

Pulling, pulling, and through the door, into the hallway where the flames had already begun licking across the ceiling, devouring the ancient wallpaper, the old dry wood. 

He stood and stumble-stepped through the second door, into the open, the front door tantalizingly close, sunlight pouring through. John's arm around his waist, strong, sturdy, holding him as they limped forward. 

They went through the door and out into the open, the daylight and fresh air a shock to his abused lungs, and he staggered, went down to his knees, cried out as the shard of glass was pushed further into the skin. 

John, coughing and gasping next to him, not letting go. His hands on Sherlock's shoulders, holding him. Soothing him. One of his hand went to Sherlock's hair, stroking through it, calming, reassuring. He could close his eyes, he thought. He could close his eyes and drift off to sleep right here. 

"We're all right," John said, voice hoarse, breathless from smoke inhalation. The skin on his face was red, irritated. "You're all right." 

Sherlock did close his eyes for a moment, closed his eyes and breathed, and then he was pushing up, up to his feet, ignoring the stab of pain in his knee, ignoring John who tried to hold him still.

He lurched around the side of the building, burning in earnest now, flames had leapt across to the next building. There were sirens, a cacophony of them, and any minute now they'd be surrounded by emergency personnel. 

The bounty hunter. The Golem. Dzundza. Whoever or whatever he was. He couldn't have gone far. 

Sherrinford had manipulated him into helping, had wanted to get his hands on the sample for his own purposes. But he'd been truthful about the consequences of the Golem finding it. Without it, the work couldn't continue in any capacity. If the Golem got away, if he got back to his craft in West Virginia, if he were allowed to _leave,_ then all of this would have been for nothing. 

He dragged himself forward. 

There was movement behind a dumpster at the far end of the alleyway. A hissing sound. He hesitated. Coughed. His vision was swimming. 

A man at the end of the alleyway, incongruous in an expensive suit amongst the garbage and graffiti. Keen eyes. Hooked nose. Receding hairline. Cigarette. 

He was holding a cooler in his hand. Sherrinford's cooler. 

"Wait," Sherlock gasped, stumbling forward. There was something bubbling at the man's feet, bubbling green, and he recoiled even as the man took several steps back. The Golem. The Golem was dissolving. Melting away. 

The man with the cigarette regarded him impassively, both of them a safe distance from the melting horror between them. He took another puff on his cigarette, dropped the butt onto the ground. Walked away. 

"Stop," Sherlock said, stepping forward. Too close. His eyes began to water, his chest locking up. He stumbled, went down to his knees again. This time he didn't have the strength to make a sound as the glass shard dug in again. 

"Sherlock, God," John's voice again, John's hands on his skin, John pulling him back. There were sirens, closer now, people. John was holding him close, breathing with him, and he shut his eyes, tipped his head back. 

"Over here," John shouted, beckoning one of the EMTs. Someone slipped an oxygen mask over Sherlock's face. He opened his eyes, looked up at John. Cool air kissed his lips.

*

Lestrade's office still carried a faint cigarette odor. He sat behind his desk, regarding them both. His expression was dark, his shoulders rigid and tense. 

John swallowed, glanced over at Sherlock with no small amount of dismay. 

"There's no easy way to say this," Lestrade said.

"Best not waste time on niceties and get straight to the point," Sherlock said. His voice was dry, like brittle twigs. Hoarse from the smoke inhalation. 

John shot him a look he hoped conveyed, in no uncertain terms, that he was to shut up immediately. 

"Fine," Lestrade said, and he flashed an entirely unpleasant grin. The kind of grin that was more of a grimace. "Your conduct on this case was unacceptable." 

John stiffened up. "Sir, that's—" 

"I'm not through," Lestrade said. He worked his jaw, scowled, leaned back in his chair. "You both have been allowed to act with a certain amount of freedom, given the nature of the work you do. But may I remind you that you are federal employees? You aren't above the law, you _are_ the law." 

"If this is about—" Sherlock started. 

"This is about you—" Lestrade was almost shouting how. He stood up, fingers pressed against the wood top of his desk for balance. "This is about you using false credentials to gain access to a classified military research lab. Helping a murder suspect _steal_ government property. There's video, Agent Holmes. And your face on it, clear as day, walking into that lab." 

John felt sick. He shut his eyes, breathed, opened them again. Looked over at Sherlock, who was sitting very stiffly in his chair, chin tucked in, face haughty and closed off. 

"And you, Agent Watson—" Lestrade said, and John startled. "Have you forgotten all of your FBI training? You receive a credible threat against another research clinic, and instead of calling ahead to notify the proper authorities, the pair of you decide to just drive over and have a look on your own time? A man is dead. That could have been prevented if either one of you had shown an ounce of common sense." 

"You won't find any remains," Sherlock said. His voice was distant, his eyes unfocused, as though he'd retreated somewhere behind the walls of his mind palace to wait out Lestrade's wrath. "Not in Maryland, not in Philadelphia or Ohio or Virginia. There aren't any remains to be found." 

"There are witnesses—" 

"Oh, someone died there," Sherlock agreed mildly. "But not a man, and not in any way that's going to make any sense to you. Ask the Philadelphia field agents who were present at the time of Victor Hatherley's death what they think. Or the agents on the scene at Memorial Bridge, when they pulled that body out of the water." 

"Victor Hatherley was exposed to a highly toxic and extremely volatile substance," Lestrade said.

"Is that the story you've been sold?"

"Sherlock," John said. 

"Oh don't bother cutting him off," Lestrade said. "Let him run his mouth. It's going to be his last chance for a while." 

"What?" That had shocked Sherlock out of his mild act, and now he was studying Lestrade with the full intensity of his focus. 

"You've been shut down." 

"Sir," Sherlock said, and John never stopped marveling at how he could switch gears and appear so suddenly contrite. "I do apologize for the inconvenience that we've caused, but—" 

"Save it," Lestrade said. "The X Files program has been shut down. Officially." 

"You can't do that—" John said, feeling as though the ground had opened up beneath his feet, that his stomach was plunging and plunging and plunging towards the bottomless depths. 

"It's out of my hands," Lestrade said. "The order came from above. You'll both be reassigned." 

Sherlock stood up. 

John, helpless, stood too. 

"Where is he?" Sherlock demanded. "The man. The one who uses your office as his personal ashtray." 

"Agent Holmes, you're out of line." 

"No," Sherlock said, and the smile that flitted onto his face was cold and not a little terrifying. "No, you said I ought to take this last opportunity to run my mouth, so I think I will. That man, the one who leans against your filing cabinets and _spies_ on us. He was there, at the clinic in Maryland." 

Lestrade pursed his lips, a muscle in his jaw jumping. "Leave it." 

"I'm not a dog," Sherlock said. "I don't take commands." 

"You wouldn't be in this situation if you did." 

"Sherlock—" John tried again. 

"He was there," Sherlock said. He stabbed one slender finger against the wood of Lestrade's desk. "He's up to his neck in this, and—" 

"You're quite right, of course. I was there," a voice spoke from behind them, dry, amused. 

John whirled around, Sherlock tensing next to him.

The man in question had slipped into the office through a side door, was standing near the wall, utterly unruffled in his tailored suit. He had an unlit cigarette in his hand and, as they watched, dragged a match against a bank of filing cabinets, sparking a tiny flame. He lit the end, slow, deliberate movements. Breathed in. Smiled.

His smile was chilling. It did not reach those pale, assessing eyes. 

"Quite lucky for you that I was," the man continued. "Because I happened to be there, evidence that you removed from a secure military facility without proper clearance has been returned. There are those that would see you prosecuted for this. Be grateful you've received only minor repudiation." 

Sherlock stared at him. John waited at the ready by his side. 

The man stared coolly back, eyebrows raised, as though amused and surprised by their reactions. 

"Get out," Lestrade said. His voice was tired. He sank back down into his chair. "You'll both be receiving your new assignments tomorrow." 

Sherlock opened his mouth, looked like he wanted to say something more. Instead he turned on his heel, went through the door without hesitating. 

John followed, a few paces behind. Sherlock went down the hallway towards the elevator at a fast clip. 

"Sherlock," he called, finally, hurrying to catch up. 

Sherlock turned. His face had gone blank and stony. His eyes, though, his eyes were terrible to behold. Stunned and shocked and blinking blinking blinking. 

"It's over," Sherlock said. "I've lost." 

"Don't talk like that," John said, moving in a little closer, keeping his voice low, conscious of the people streaming through the hallways. He reached out, patted a tentative hand against Sherlock's shoulder. "You can't talk like that." 

"My work," Sherlock said. "My work is the only thing that matters to me." 

John shut his eyes, thought of Sherlock again in the darkness of that Bellefleur motel room, the striking profile of his face lit by intermittent flashes of lightning. "I know," he said. "I'm—Christ, I'm sorry." 

The elevator dinged, the doors sliding open. 

Sherlock's face was blank, but the rest of him—the body language, the eyes—looked raw and cracked open. Exhausted. Stunned and possibly a little bit heartbroken as well. 

John wanted to pull him into his arms, onlookers be damned. He wanted to rest Sherlock's head on his shoulder and run his fingers through that ridiculous hair and tell him that it was all going to be all right, that they'd figure it out, that they'd figure it out _together._

Jesus, oh, oh God, he thought. Sherlock Holmes has become the most important person in my life. 

If that wasn't crazy, he didn't know what was. 

He settled for curling his fingers against Sherlock's arm, squeezing. 

Sherlock looked down at his hand as if not quite comprehending how it had gotten there. 

"What are you going to do?" John asked, his voice low, barely even a murmur. Behind them, the elevator doors tried to close, and he stuck his hand out to hold them open. 

Sherlock, still staring at his hand, spoke slowly, as though waking from a deep sleep. "I suppose I'll—have to drive back up to Connecticut and tell my parents I lost their son again." 

John sucked in a breath, shook his head. His eyes stung. 

The look Sherlock gave him was flat, bewildered. Young. "I—" Sherlock said, and then he shook his head, stepped back. He seemed to decide something, gathered himself up. "Well. Good luck with the rest of your career, John." 

"What?" John frowned. "Sherlock, what—?"

Sherlock had already turned away from the elevator, away from John, was moving off through the sea of people in the hallway at a good clip. 

"Sherlock!" John shouted. 

Several people turned to stare. Sherlock was not one of them. 

*

There was a baseball game on the television that hung over the bar. A handful of people paid it halfhearted attention. 

Across the room, another television was tuned to a news program. 

Sherlock sat alone at a high table, ignoring the quiet chatter around him. He had a beer in front of him, untouched, just for show. 

The news was covering a wildfire that had spread out of control. Odd thing to happen in such a damp spring. He circled his finger on the rim of his glass, pursed his lips. 

A reporter in a trench coat was standing on a hilltop, talking to the camera while the fire raged a safe distance behind her. He did not need to hear what she was saying. 

West Virginia, he thought. Another coverup. An entire swath of woods destroyed, perfect cover for the removal of a craft that wasn't supposed to be there. 

The door opened, admitting a herd of giggling twentysomethings who took over the table behind him. He stood, left a handful of bills on the sticky tabletop, went through a hallway in the back towards the restrooms. 

She was waiting for him against the wall. 

"Thank you for meeting me," he said. 

The Housekeeper nodded, raised her brows in silent question. 

He leaned against the wall across from her. "It was you that sent me the photos," he said. "Sending us to that clinic." 

"I try to help where I can, Agent Holmes," she said. "Although you've lost the only leverage you had. I'm afraid there's no stopping it now." 

"That man wasn't my brother." 

She tipped her head to the side. "Yes and no." 

"They were copies." 

"Yes," she agreed. "But very good copies, don't you think?" 

"I wouldn't know," he snapped. "The last time I saw him he was eight years old. He could have grown up to be anyone. Assuming—" he hesitated, looked down. "Assuming he did, in fact, grow up." 

"What do you think?" 

He lifted his head, looked at her. As before, she remained frustratingly difficult to read. Maternal softness concealing a steel core. 

"I think that whatever happened to him back when we were kids wasn't a random event. I think he was chosen." 

She made a little giggling sound, lifting one hand up to her mouth. The look she gave him was warm, tinged with something not unlike amused pity. "Oh, you poor dear. What on earth did you think your mother was doing at the State Department all those years? The typing?"

He reeled back. "What are you talking about?" 

She shook her head, waved a dismissive hand at him. "You had a chance to stop this, but you let it slip through your fingers. Right over the edge." 

"Are you saying I should have let John die?"

She looked at him with sad serious eyes. "We all make sacrifices. We all have to choose what, exactly, it is that we're fighting for." 

Sherlock opened his mouth, shut it. A kitchen worker bustled by, holding a tub of dirty dishes. 

"My advice to you, Agent Holmes?" She reached out, touched him on the shoulder. "Enjoy yourself. All of this—" she gestured vaguely to the air around her. "—isn't going to be around for much longer." 

*

Someone had boxed up his files. His posters, all of his various eclectic collections and clippings, had been removed from the walls. 

He stared at the space where they'd once hung. 

There was a numbness seeping through his veins, a cold, bewildering confusion that he hadn't felt since he was a child. 

The desk phone rang. 

He considered ignoring it. Gave in after the second ring, snatched it up.

"Holmes." 

"Oh!" Agent Hooper, who seemed perpetually startled every time someone spoke to her. Even when she was the one who'd initiated the conversation. "Agent Holmes. Hi. It's. Erm. Agent Hooper. From the lab?" 

"Yes," he said, terse, his patience stretched thin. "Obviously. What is it?" 

"I was actually trying to reach Agent Watson. Not—not that I'm sorry to be talking to you! But. Erm—" 

"He's not here," Sherlock said. "I'll pass on the message. What is it?" 

"Just—the samples. The ones he sent from the field office in Philadelphia." As always, her voice calmed, steadied, once she focused on her work. "I've run every conceivable test on them and—I honestly have no idea what kind of substance it is that he came in contact with. It's not anything I've ever seen before. I was thinking of sending it on to—" 

"No," Sherlock said. "No, don't—don't send it anywhere. The case is closed, Agent Hooper." 

"But—" 

"You don't want the kind of attention that will bring your way," he said. He spoke in a clipped tone, hoping he sounded sufficiently intimidating. She'd be better off dropping it. Safer. "Thank you for looking into it." 

He hung up before she could protest. Stood looking once more at his sad, empty little office.

It seemed smaller, somehow, with his personal effects removed. 

The framed photograph he'd kept, he and Sherrinford grinning wildly at the camera, had been left face down on his desk. He picked it up, stared at it. 

Then he tucked it under his arm, left the office. He did not bother to lock the door behind him. 

*

There was a place, in Manhattan. A sort of club where those with the appropriate assets and connections could pay to pass the time in the company of their own kind. 

It was an area free of politics, of discord of any kind. Its members were not permitted to speak, but instead passed long evenings in comfortable chairs, drinking good liquor, all without saying a word. 

If one were to enter this club, and proceed down a long hallway to an elevator, and if one possessed the proper credentials to get past the rather imposing security stationed there, they would find themselves ascending to a penthouse suite, a luxurious room with sweeping skyline views. 

The room was paneled in dark wood, richly appointed. The smell of smoke often hung thick in the air, good smoke, cultured smoke, only the finest Cuban cigars. 

It was here that world leaders often met to discuss matters of foreign affairs. 

These leaders did not have their names in any papers, were not known to the general public. 

Wiggins and his ilk might have referred to them as a _shadow government._ The men and women behind the curtain. The ones pulling the strings. 

One of these men stood by the window, looking out at the skyline. He had a cigarette pressed between his lips. 

"This was close," a woman said. She was blonde, neat in appearance, well-manicured. She spoke in a crisp English accent. "Too close." 

"It was resolved, in the end," he said. 

"Mycroft," she said. 

He turned towards her, tilted his head. "Lady Smallwood," he replied, a slight condescending lilt to his voice.

"If he had been allowed to escape—"

"Which he was not." 

"If he _had,_ all of our plans would have been jeopardized. All of our work. Gone." 

"It was unfortunate," Mycroft agreed. "But you are forgetting that something good came out of this." He took another drag on his cigarette, slow. "We have it, now." 

"I hope you're not suggesting that was by design."

"A fortuitous accident. Although I'm sure you'd agree that it's better in our control than in the hands of Moriarty. He's becoming something of a loose cannon." 

"Holmes as well." 

Mycroft lifted his head. "He's been dealt with. The X Files unit has been shut down. He is no longer a threat." 

"Some of us believe—" 

"You believe wrongly," he said, stubbing his cigarette out in a heavy crystal ashtray. He returned his attention to the window. 

Anyone watching him would have thought him to be admiring the skyline. In fact, he was watching the skies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No chapter next week, as I will likely be bogged down with all manner of Thanksgiving holiday craziness. 
> 
> I am so incredibly appreciative of the enthusiasm and discussion this story has prompted. Your comments mean so much to me. See you in two weeks! :)


	7. New Players (Part 1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Fandom Trumps Hate charity auction recently concluded, and I was fortunate enough to be the winning bidder on the incredibly talented Khorazir, who has produced some absolutely gorgeous artwork for this story. See the link at the end of the chapter!

*

Sherlock had spent time in some terrible motels. Bad wallpaper. Ugly carpeting. Stained sheets. Sagging mattresses. Strange smells. Thin walls. The nature of his profession meant that he was often on the road, and frequently forced to choose lodgings based on convenience and proximity rather than quality. 

So yes, he'd spent time in some terrible motels. 

This particular motel put them all to shame. 

He sat on a scuffed wooden chair, feet up, knees tucked under his chin. His laptop was open on the ugly little table in front of him and he typed monotonously, transcribing the conversation unfolding in the room next door. 

He probably could have made out the voices even without the assistance of the bugs that had been planted, so thin were the walls, but bugs had indeed been planted and so he had the dubious privilege of listening to the conversation through a pair of noise-cancelling headphones. 

"Do you remember that strip joint we were at in Miami a few years back?" 

"Oh yeah. How could I forget?"

"I was back there the other day. Met this girl. Tuesday." 

"You went on a Tuesday?" 

"No, that's her name. The stripper. Tuesday." 

"Oh, oh, yeah, all right." 

"Anyway, she's on stage, dancing, and—" 

He tuned them out, left only a small sliver of his attention on the conversation, enough to feed the information to his fingers, which typed typed typed. 

He'd forgotten. Somehow, in his time on the X Files, he'd forgotten that the vast majority of crime was _dull._ The criminals themselves, somehow even duller. The man he'd been assigned to follow were under investigation for minor financial fraud. Tenuous mafia connections. 

He'd been sitting in this chair, in this motel, every day for the last week. For hours. Gathering useless information that would eventually be used to coerce boring petty criminals into ratting out other, slightly less petty (but no less boring) criminals. 

It was grunt work. Anyone could do it. Children could do it. Hell, monkeys could probably be trained to do it. 

He'd expected, on some level, that he'd be reassigned to the Violent Crimes Unit, handed back over to those who appreciated his very specific skillset (if not, perhaps, the personality that it arrived cloaked in.) He'd stop looking for perpetrators of a fantastic nature and begin, once more, to hunt homegrown monsters. 

It wasn't—it wasn't the work he should be doing. The work he needed to be doing. But at least it was _interesting._

Instead, it had been wiretapping. Petty theft. Insurance fraud. Boring. Dull. A waste of time. 

"My brain," he'd said to Lestrade, in a fit of desperation, after the first week. "It's a muscle, Lestrade. It needs to work, or it will atrophy." 

Lestrade had stared at him with a look of mingled exasperation and pity. "Find a hobby," he'd said, finally. "And I want those transcripts on my desk by the end of the day." 

He'd wanted an extra day to turn in the transcripts, just out of spite. 

Lestrade had given him a long, level look, had not said a word. 

He wasn't going to beg. 

That was, he'd decided, what they wanted him to do. These assignments were a punishment, the Bureau's equivalent of sending him to sit in the corner and think about his mistakes. They wanted him broken. They wanted him contrite. They wanted him to come crawling back, to beg for VCU assignments, to be grateful and humbled when they finally let him back in. 

He wouldn't do it. If the Bureau wanted to punish him out of spite, then he was more than capable of being spiteful right back. He had reserves of spite they hadn't even touched yet. 

He would quit before he begged. 

"—so she was dancing, right? And I just had to—I mean—you've seen her, right? You know what I'm talking about? I had to talk to her. So—" 

He shut his eyes, tipped his head back. His neck had started to ache. 

*

John smoothed his white lab coat, glanced at his calendar, sighed. Two more full autopsies, one with a class of academy students scheduled to observe. 

Great. It was hard enough to maintain one's dignity while schlepping organs back and forth across the room to be weighed and measured without adding bright-eyed FBI agents-in-training and their inane questions into the mix. 

He paused at that thought, bemused. It seemed a very Sherlock way of looking at things. 

The months had dragged grimly on following his reassignment. The drizzly east coast spring had wilted into a hot and humid summer. Not that he noticed much, spending his days in the chilled morgue at Quantico. 

In some ways, it was like he'd never left. His days were scheduled, structured, an endless parade of corpses. Minor mysteries to unravel. Occasionally, he was expected to stand in front of a group of academy students and offer bits of wisdom as he made his Y-incision. 

_Must be dreadfully boring for a man of action such as yourself,_ Sherlock had said, back when they'd first met. He'd read it on him, clear as day. And he'd been right. 

He'd started brewing coffee at home, bringing it with him in a travel mug. Too often he'd found himself at the counter ordering for two. Hard habit to break. 

Christ, there were days when he'd half-convinced himself that he'd seen Sherlock loitering outside of his apartment building, had to stop himself from giving chase.

And that—that was going down a road that he didn't particularly care to think about. Sherlock had made it quite clear that their association had ended along with their partnership. They weren't friends. They weren't… they weren't anything. 

He'd let the man be, for a short time, following their censure and reassignment. He'd eventually tried reaching out, tentatively, by text. One phone call. All unanswered. 

That was that. He had no intention of harassing Sherlock, of chasing him down and inflicting his obviously unwanted company on him. Sherlock had—Sherlock had lost everything. His work. His brother. And that was all on John, wasn't it? John had stood there on that bridge and watched as his ~~friend~~ partner's carefully constructed life fell apart. 

The fact that the man who'd died that night in exchange for John hadn't really been Sherrinford Holmes wasn't the point. At the time, Sherlock had believed it to be so. And he'd risked him, and he'd lost him, and he'd failed. 

So no, if Sherlock didn't want to see him, John wasn't going to push it. 

Even if their parting had coincided, rather uncomfortably, with John realizing exactly how important Sherlock had become to him. 

And that was the crux of it, he knew. Here he was again, alone, at a crossroads in his career, his life, looking back with regret. Except this time, perhaps it was regret over something he hadn't done, rather than something he had. 

He had a habit of leaping without thinking. He had a habit of falling in love with emotionally unavailable authority figures. He'd done it before. He always did it. In medical school, he'd not been content enough to have a minor flirtation going with Sarah, who in addition to being fifteen years his senior had also been his professor and mentor. No, a flirtation hadn't been enough, not when she'd been beautiful, and brilliant, and had seen such potential in him. And she'd been married, she'd had a _child_ for God's sake, and she'd been on the cusp of walking away from all of it for him. They'd been making plans for when he finished his rotations. Real plans. Permanent plans.

He'd panicked. He'd panicked and he'd run and instead of setting up in a cushy private practice with the brilliant Dr. Sawyer, he'd taken his shiny new medical degree halfway across the world, used his expensively trained hands to put pressure on torn flesh, to staunch blood flow, to hold bits of men together long enough for them to take another breath. 

But that hadn't been that, had it? Because there under the Afghan sun had been Major Sholto, and that had come with its own wave of regret and self-recrimination. And then that had been torn away from him, before he'd even had a chance to come to terms with any of it. 

And then the academy, briefly taking up with Murray. Murray, who'd been his instructor. He'd had a military background, too. It had connected them, at first. They'd bonded over it. It had been risky for both of them. That had been part of the appeal. 

Christ, they were lucky not to have both been fired. Lucky that he hadn't killed yet another fledgling career through poor choices and inaction. 

But Sherlock was—

He'd never met anyone quite like Sherlock. He doubted he ever would again. 

He'd held himself in check. He hadn't even allowed himself to consider the possibility. He'd been happy, fulfilled in a way that he never had before. The work had been meaningful. Strange, but meaningful. And interesting and unpredictable enough to keep him on his toes. 

To be pulled from that and sent back to Quantico—

It felt like a punishment. It probably was a punishment. He'd failed to fulfill the unspoken purpose of his assignment. He had not thoroughly and irrefutably discredited the life's work of Sherlock Holmes. He'd argued when the man drew conclusions that seemed irrational or impossible, of course, but there had been glimpses of something—something more. And his own curiosity had fueled him, driven him to continue the exploration, to work alongside Sherlock instead of against him. 

He couldn't bring himself to regret that. No matter how the rest of it had turned out. 

"Agent Watson?" 

He blinked, looked up. One of the morgue attendants was watching him with a quizzical expression. 

"You all right?" she asked. "You looked like you were miles away. A little freaky, really." 

His answering smile was tight. 

*

The agent relieving him for the evening arrived, entered the room quietly, set a fast food bag on the table. 

Sherlock sniffed, scowled, his stomach recoiling at the heavy, greasy odor. The agent had introduced himself when the assignment had first started. He'd almost immediately deleted the man's name as irrelevant. 

"Did anything—"

"Nothing of interest," Sherlock said. He stood up, stretched, reached for his discarded suit jacket. "Good night." 

He went out into the warm summer night, jacket slung over his arm. His car was parked at the far edge of the lot. He glanced around him as he walked, noted the various vehicles without really intending to, drawing connections, identifying politician types sneaking off for illicit affairs, travel-weary businessmen in rental cars, families at a halfway point towards happier destinations. 

He did not give the motel a backwards glance as he left. 

As had become his usual routine (and he abhorred routine, truly—a compelling need to do the same thing in the same way every single day was surely the mark of a dull mind), he did not drive straight home. Instead, he found himself parking along a tree-lined street in Georgetown, rolling his shirtsleeves up, affecting a casual air as he strolled along the sidewalk. 

He did not slow up as he passed John's building, did not pay it any more attention than he did to any of his other surroundings. Just went on walking. 

John was parking his car just around the nearest corner, locking the doors, walking towards his building with his shoulders slumped, his steps slow. Weary. 

He did not glance up as Sherlock passed by on the other side of the street. 

He'd conducted at least three autopsies, Sherlock decided, studying him out of the corner of his eye. From the stiff way he was holding his head, the tension in his shoulders. He'd spent a significant amount of time bent in an uncomfortable position. 

The weariness in his step was less due to physical exhaustion (although that factored), and more down to boredom. Clearly.

Sherlock understood boredom. 

He didn't understand John's boredom. Surely the Bureau had to know they were wasting John's talents, keeping him cooped up at Quantico. Surely he'd proven himself in his time with the X Files. His performance had been exemplary. 

For him to be punished, for them to be treating him as spitefully as they'd been treating Sherlock—it didn't make any sense. John's career should have righted itself the moment he'd stepped outside Sherlock's sphere of influence. He was never meant to stay. The fact that he had, for as long as he had, was remarkable in and of itself. 

He was meant to go on to better things. Instead, he was being squandered.

Sherlock hesitated as he reached the end of the street.

It would be easy. Very easy to turn around, to ring the buzzer for John's building. John would let him in. John might even be happy to see him.

And that was what made it a bad idea. A dangerous idea. Because Sherlock had worked alone, had always preferred it that way. And in spite of himself, he'd gone and let himself get used to having John around. Had come to like it. 

He hadn't been subtle about it. 

Others had noticed.

He could be reached, through John. Manipulated. Moved about like a pawn on a chess board, made to dance, John's life casually dangled as incentive. 

John's face had been bruised, on the bridge. There had been a dark crust of dried blood under his nose. He'd been battered about, hurt, not because he was a federal agent in a risky occupation, but specifically because of his connection to Sherlock. 

If nothing else, the order to shut down the X Files unit had provided an opportunity to make a clean break. Let John think that he was angry, or indifferent, or—well, whatever he thought. It didn't matter. What mattered was that he didn't try to pursue the issue, that he went on his way, continued with his own life, his own career. 

Sherlock would adjust. He'd grow reaccustomed to working alone. It would be easier, better, when there were real cases, something to occupy his mind beyond mindless drivel. 

In his line of work, caring was not an advantage. 

He turned, walked back towards his car. Did not glance up at John's building. 

*

The summer heat had finally snapped, a brisk autumn wind ushering in the change of season. 

John did not allow himself more than a brief moment to indulge in nostalgia as he stood outside of the Hoover Building. He did not often have reason to visit FBI headquarters, the vast majority of his work confined to Quantico and the labs. 

But he'd been involved in forensics on a case that had just wrapped, and had been asked to present his findings in person. He'd prepped his report carefully, feeling a faint twinge of resentment that his every move still felt, in some ways, like an audition. 

Still, it was a day spent doing something other than staring at corpses, an afternoon in a suit instead of soft blue scrubs and a white coat. A chance to, once again, show that he had utility beyond doctoring the dead.

He walked the halls with far more confidence than he had the first time he'd made his way into the building. He joined the crowd of people moving towards the elevators, ignored the small but persistent urge to press the button for the basement. 

It had been months. Their little basement office had surely been stripped and repurposed by now.

The elevator doors opened on another crowded hallway, and as he stepped around two agents who had paused to converse, he glimpsed a familiar figure moving in his direction. 

Sherlock. 

As inscrutable as ever, tall and pale and imposing in his dark suit. He walked with that same peculiar, focused grace, people moving out of his way instinctively, without conscious thought. 

John grinned, took a step forward. 

"Good morning, Sherlock—" he said, the words dying in his mouth as Sherlock swept past 

He froze, turning to watch as Sherlock continued down the hallway, his head up, his shoulders straight. There had not been so much as a flicker of recognition on his face, not the slightest hesitation, not even the suggestion of a greeting. 

He realized he was clenching his fist and forced it to relax. Took a deep breath. Nodded. Continued on his way. 

*

John ordered a beer, settled back onto his barstool. There was a baseball game on the television behind the bar and he watched it with a distracted eye. 

The beer was cold. It went down easy.

He hadn't felt much like going out for drinks after work, lately.

He hadn't felt much like anything, lately. 

He'd spent the last few months traversing from apartment to lab back to apartment, grim and determined, like some kind of joyless robot. He'd had enough. 

Whatever he thought he and Sherlock had, he'd been wrong. It was time to stop dwelling on it, time to stop grieving it, time to move on. He was more than a little embarrassed that he'd spent as much time as he had tying himself into knots over it. 

Sherlock's non-reaction in the hallway was all of the confirmation he needed. He didn't want to be friends. He didn't want to be so much as a passing, nodding acquaintance. 

He finished his beer, signaled for another one. 

He'd given up on dating, while he was working on the X Files. There had been no way to balance it, not with the work and Sherlock coming first. Now that his hours were a bit more normalized, there was no reason he couldn't make a few tentative forays back into the romantic world. 

He scanned the room, noticing a handful of attractive women standing near the back. 

No time like the present. 

He stood up, taking his beer with him. Plastered a smooth smile on his face, made his way across the room. 

Happened to glance through the plate glass window at the front of the tavern as he brushed through the crowd, his gaze snagging on a tall, pale, achingly familiar figure in a dark coat. 

Their eyes locked. 

Sherlock blinked. Took a step back. Then another. Disappeared into the crowd. 

"Oh, enough of that," John said. He set his beer down on the nearest table, pushed through the crowd, plunged out onto the street. 

There was a chill bite to the wind, the setting sun leaching the warmth from the air. 

John hesitated for a moment, glancing in both directions before noting the unmistakable back of Sherlock's head, disappearing around a corner. He took off at a run, blood singing in his veins as he sprinted down the street, shoes skidding as he turned the same corner. 

"Sherlock!" 

Ahead of him, Sherlock slowed, defeated. He hesitated for a moment, only a moment, before turning around. His face was bland, neutral. 

"Hello, John." 

"Have you just—" John took a deep breath, winded from his impromptu sprint. "Have you just been _following_ me around?" 

Even as he said it, he knew it had to be true. That all of those times he'd looked out his window, or glanced behind him in a crowd—all those times he'd seen a figure that had made him think _Sherlock_ \-- that it truly had been him. 

That absolute _bastard._

"Of course not," Sherlock said. "I have no idea what you're talking about." 

"Sherlock." 

"This is a complete coincidence. I was simply considering stopping off for a nightcap." 

"This isn't your neighborhood." 

Sherlock shrugged. "Better bars." 

"You don't go to bars." 

Sherlock opened his mouth to respond. John shook his head, held up his hand.

"No, just—Sherlock, look. Just. You're being an idiot."

His jaw dropped, just the tiniest bit. An offended crease between his brows.

"Stop avoiding me," John said. "And then just—following me around. Just talk to me." 

Sherlock shut his mouth. Opened it again. Shut it. Cleared his throat. When he at last spoke, his voice was remarkably composed. "It's best if we don't speak. Association with me has endangered your life. Your career." 

"Oh," John said. He rolled his eyes. "Let me worry about that, yeah?" 

Sherlock's brow creased even further. 

"Are you all right, Sherlock? You know I—I saw you today. At the Hoover Building. You were—not quite yourself. You looked lost in your own head." 

"Why would you care?" 

John breathed out between his teeth. "What are you talking about? I'm your friend. Of course I care." 

"I don't have friends." 

"Oh for—all right, then I'm a close former colleague who cares about your well-being. All right?" 

Furrowed brow again, confused this time, not perturbed. He stared at John like he'd never seen him before, as if John might, himself, be some kind of extraterrestrial. 

"All right," Sherlock said, finally. He put his hands in his pockets, all of a sudden looking tremendously unsure. 

John shut his eyes, a soft laugh threatening somewhere deep in his chest, escaping as little more than an amused exhalation. He put his hand on Sherlock's arm. 

"Come on." 

"Where are we going?" 

"I ran out on my tab," John said. "And it's cold out here. Let me buy you a drink." 

He gave a gentle tug, released his arm. Started walking back in the direction of the little tavern he'd just vacated. He was all too aware of Sherlock trailing behind him, very close. 

*

They went into a noisy bar, John cutting through the crowd of people without turning to check that Sherlock followed. 

He did follow.

John leaned up against the bar, said something to the bartender. She was young, mid-twenties. Interned during the day. Rented an apartment more expensive than she could afford. Had a cat. 

Then John was pressing a sweating glass into his hand, steering him away from the bar and into a quiet corner. 

He considered protesting. Instead, he took a sip, wrinkled his nose. Took another sip. 

This was an odd choice, he thought. The location, not the beer. It was not a traditional law enforcement nightspot. The men and women in their half-rumpled business suits, with their tired faces and their trying-too-hard laughter, they were not FBI or CIA or police. Cogs in the political machine, all of them, working to turn the wheels for some senator or another, some congressman. 

He took another sip of his beer, looked at John across the high top table they'd settled against. There was an odd expression on John's face. 

Ah. He hadn't come here because he liked the ambiance. He'd come here looking to meet someone for some kind of no-strings-attached dalliance. He'd wanted to choose someone he had little chance of running into at a later date. 

The room was warm. Noisy. Someone to his left threw back their head and laughed, a little too loud, a little too long. 

"I keep waiting to see your name as the investigating agent on the file for one of my corpses," John said, leaning forward so he didn't have to shout over the merry din of their surroundings. "Hasn't happened yet." 

There was something marvelous in that, in a person who could look at the file of a dead person and think of Sherlock, without a trace of discomfort or any morbid intent whatsoever. 

He took another sip of his beer, hoping to quell the odd warm feeling that had begun spreading in his chest. It did not particularly help. 

"They haven't let me near anything like that." 

John frowned, set his beer down on the table. "What do you mean? I thought the whole reason they wanted you off the X Files in the first place was because you were—er—wasting your potential." 

"Clearly they wanted me off the X Files because they didn't much care for what I was uncovering in my investigations," Sherlock said. He horrified himself by adding. "They want me to quit. I'm seriously considering it, at this point." 

"Quit? You?" 

He shrugged, lifted his beer to his mouth, surprised to find the glass was almost empty. "Little point remaining, now. I can get farther in my work on my own." 

John frowned, studied him from across the table. 

"They've got me working electronic surveillance," Sherlock said, and _why_ was he still talking? He'd never been the type to need to fill silences with inane babble. "Bank fraud. Insurance fraud. _Health care_ fraud. It's been months now." 

"I know it's frustrating," John hedged.

"No," Sherlock said, shook his head. "That's just it. It's not frustrating, it's numbing." 

John looked down at his beer. 

"I've no doubt that when they think I've been sufficiently humbled, they'll come crawling back with a real case. Just enough to keep me hooked. Just enough to keep my attention from wandering to places they'd rather it didn't." 

He swallowed the last of his drink. John flagged down the bartender for a second round. 

He should refuse, he knew. He should step away now. But instead he caught himself smiling a bit as John clinked their glasses together. 

"I have contacts, you know," he said, taking a healthy swallow. If he hadn't been babbling before, he certainly was now, but couldn't seem to bring himself to stop talking. "High level. Congressmen. A senator I helped once—did I tell you about that? I ought to tell you about that one day. Kind of thing you might like."

John shook his head, smiled at him. He said something (likely some trite platitude or another) that Sherlock ignored in favor of watching how the light played in his fair hair. 

They ordered a third round, and Sherlock found himself launching into a detailed explanation of the Palomar observatory in San Diego, how the telescope (for a time, the largest in the world) had been designed by a supposedly brilliant astronomer back in the 1940s. An astronomer who claimed that an elf had crawled into his window and presented him with the idea. 

He'd meant for the story to be funny, but it came out of his mouth bitter, almost resentful. People mistook crazy for genius all the time. It was a fine line, after all. Most of the time, he wasn't even certain on which side he fell.

John had looked at him with a serious expression, and he was close, so close, leaning over the little table to be heard over the din of the crowd, and said: "Even if he only saw elves in his mind, the telescope still got built." 

A cheer went up from around the bar. He glanced over. There were several people focused on the television. Some kind of sporting event. He rolled his eyes, returned his attention to John. Caught his breath. 

The look on John's face was—

He couldn't quite classify it. There was fondness. And sadness. And some small measure of amusement, perhaps. His eyes gleamed under the dim tavern lights. 

"September baseball," John said, nodding his head towards the television. "Things start to get exciting." 

"Do they?" 

"You weren't much for team sports as a kid, were you?" There was no bite to John's words, just that same persistent warm fondness.

Sherlock made a derisive noise. 

"No, I don't suppose you would have been," John said. His skin looked warm, golden, under the lights. He took a long swallow of his drink, set it firmly back down on the table, the kind of motion that meant something had been decided. 

Sherlock had no idea what decision he could have possibly reached. 

"Come on," John said, stepping away from the table. 

Sherlock followed him back through the noisy, close press of after-work revelers, stood behind him as he settled up the tab at the bar, trailed after as he went out into the night. 

John looked at him and smiled, an odd smile, enigmatic. Almost like he was surprised that Sherlock had followed, that he was still following. 

"What are we—?"

John shook his head, started walking. They fell into step together, shoulders occasionally brushing. He didn't know where they were going. He could figure it out, of course, he had extensive maps in his mind palace. But he—he was content to just amble along, the destination elusive. 

Perhaps there was no destination? 

The air was cool but he was warm in his coat, comfortable. It was a clear night, and there were stars overhead. 

They roamed for what felt like forever, not speaking. This was—he wasn't _doing_ anything. He was always doing something. And when he wasn't doing something, he was thinking. Right now, his mind was pleasantly muddled, his body happy to meander on autopilot, drawn in towards John. 

They approached what looked like some kind of park or entertainment center, shuttered up tight behind a tall fence. 

"Closed," Sherlock said, and because his own unnecessary observation irritated him, added: "Obviously." 

He didn't quite understand why they were there in the first place. What kind of appeal could be found in a place that dared sell boiled hot dogs at a premium price and call them "refreshments"? 

"Yes," John said, and grinned, a grin with just the right amount of inebriated charm, a wonderful thrill of unexpected danger. He looked meaningfully at the fence, and Sherlock raised his brows, reading what John expected and not quite able to believe it. 

John was still grinning, so Sherlock went with it, grasped the fence in hand, scaled it easily, gracefully. He glanced back over his shoulder as he crossed the top, wondering if his display of boyish agility was having any effect on John at all. He immediately wanted to smack himself for the thought, but John _was_ watching. It was too dark to make out his expression. 

He hopped down from the fence, heard the chain link rattle as John started up. Moments later, John dropped down next to him. 

"I assume there is a point to this?" 

"Oh yes," John said, striding off down a pathway, past a horrid miniature golf display. He was headed towards some sort of central structure, chain link fences. Cages of some kind? There was no detectable odor, no signs of animals present.

He hurried to follow, curiosity growing. 

"Give me a quarter," John said. 

"What?" He blinked, feeling foolish. 

"A quarter. For the machine." 

"There's no reason for you to assume that I have a pocket full of spare change—" 

"I know you do," John said, and Sherlock grudgingly reached into his pocket to turn over a quarter. 

John palmed it, went over to the nearest cage. There was a row of baseball bats hanging neatly from the chain link. 

"Come on," John said, inclining his head. He picked up one of the bats, stepped into the cage. 

Sherlock stared for a moment. 

"You've never hit a baseball, have you?" John asked him, looking over his shoulder. He dropped a quarter into a machine, stepped back. Somewhere in the gloom in front of him, gears began to turn. 

A ball came rocketing out of the darkness. John swung, connected with a crack. It arced back in the direction from which it came. 

"No," Sherlock said, stepping up very close to the chain link, hesitant and cautious in an altogether unfamiliar way. "Somehow I've always found more necessary things to do with my time." 

John connected with another ball. His swing was even, contained, yet powerful. Sherlock caught himself admiring it even without knowing, exactly, what it was he was admiring. 

"Get over here." 

Sherlock swallowed, opened the latch and stepped into the cage without hesitating. John stepped back, held the bat out with one hand. He took it, gloved knuckles brushing against John's fingers.

"What do—" he started to ask, his voice cutting off abruptly as John stepped up behind him, wrapping his arms around him, his fingers curling around the bat alongside Sherlock's. 

"You—" John said, speaking directly into Sherlock's shoulder blades, his words carrying on a huff of laughter, "—are absurdly tall." 

"Not as tall as people think," Sherlock said, frowning, not able to _think_ , not with the warm press of John behind him, fingers resting together against the wood neck of the bat. There was a tightness in his chest, a tingling that made it difficult to speak. 

A ball came whizzing out of the darkness and Sherlock flailed for it, swinging his arms out, dragging John along with him. He missed, the ball clanging against the fence behind them. John laughed, tugging him backwards. Their legs tangled and he stumbled, managed to remain upright. 

"No, you—" John laughed again, turned his head, and Sherlock was conscious of every single point at which they touched, every press of John's body against his own. "Look, all right. We—we have to go like this, all right? Hips before hands." He let go of the bat with his left hand, hovering it over Sherlock's hip ever so slightly to demonstrate. "We stride forward, then turn." He nudged the back of Sherlock's leg with his own, causing him to take a step forward, twisting his torso as he moved. 

He demonstrated again, this time [settling his hand firmly on Sherlock's hip.](https://khorazir.tumblr.com/post/157373310748/i-want-to-believe-and-hips-before-hands)

Sherlock sucked in a breath of air, the heat of John's palm sparking something in him. 

The gears clinked, and another ball came flying towards them. 

They stepped forward together, twisting, swinging the bat. The ball struck the barrel at an awkward angle, rattling Sherlock's hands even through his leather gloves. It popped upwards in a weak arc, dropped to the ground a few feet from where they stood, spinning wildly on the concrete.

"Good," John said, still laughing, soft, breathless little huffs against Sherlock's back. "That's good. Let's try again—" 

Another ball. They stepped together, swung the bat. Better contact this time. 

Sherlock smiled. He readjusted his grip. John flexed his fingers. 

"This might not hold a candle to your 'more necessary things,'" John said, and Sherlock could hear the smirk in his voice. "But. You might find, as you concentrate, that the rest of the world just fades away." 

They swung again. The ball cracked pleasingly against the bat. 

"You presume that I want the world to fade away," Sherlock said, and his voice came out far more breathlessly than he'd intended. 

"I think you need the world to fade away once in a while," John said, and they swung again, made contact. They had started moving together a bit more comfortably, Sherlock crouching slightly to adjust for their difference in height. 

John was right, in a way. The world had narrowed entirely to the two of them, adrift in the darkness under the starlight. To the press of John's body against his, the measured sound of his breathing, the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest. The huff of his laughter against Sherlock's back. The starry sky above, clear and beautiful. 

They swung again, moving together, sent another ball arcing towards the sky. 

The tightness in his chest had loosened, turned liquid and warm, spreading down his limbs. He was laughing, he realized distantly, little helpless giggles each time they swung the bat.

They were horribly matched, height-wise, for this particular configuration. John's face was smashed between his shoulder blades, his shorter arms stretched out at an uncomfortable angle around Sherlock to grip at the bat. 

Still it—it was good. 

He had no idea why it was happening, how he had gone from quietly tailing John to—to—whatever this was. Some kind of quasi embrace under the starlight. And it was—it _was_ an embrace, of that he was mostly certain. Perhaps the inclusion of sports negated the possible romantic implications of the situation?

He was hopelessly out of his depth. 

They swung the bat again, John dropping his hand one more time to Sherlock's hip, guiding him as he stepped forward. He shut his eyes as the bat made contact again, clamped his mouth shut to prevent a truly embarrassing sound from escaping. 

John removed his hand, stepped back. 

The chill air rushed in between them. Sherlock, still holding the bat, let his hands drop. 

"That's it," John said. 

Sherlock blinked, swallowed. He did not know what to say. 

"Unless you have another quarter." 

Only then, with the sluggish return of his senses, did he realize that the gears were no longer clinking. The air had gone still and silent around them. Save the traffic humming faintly in the distance, they might have been the only two people left on earth. 

"Oh," he said, because it seemed that some sort of response was necessary at this juncture. 

He turned around, still holding the bat in one hand. John was looking down at his feet, rubbing at the back of his neck with one hand, an embarrassed, self-conscious gesture.

They had both gotten a bit carried away, it seemed. 

"Um," John said, and he laughed, a thin, nervous sound. "Well. There you have it. Baseball. Not boring." 

"No," Sherlock agreed. "Not boring." 

"Right. Well. We should—probably—" 

"Yes," Sherlock said, jolting into action, straightening up and leaving the batting cage, setting the bat back where they had found it. It occurred to him that he wasn't going to see John in the morning, that the days of John bringing coffee downstairs to the cluttered basement space they'd shared were long gone. 

He hadn't wanted that. Any of it. But now that he didn't have it any more, he _missed_ it. 

They weren't partners anymore.

He should go, he knew. He should bid John farewell and go off into the night, back home to his apartment, to the work he no longer had. He should walk away from this, from whatever this was, because at best it was a complication he didn't need, and at worst it was _dangerous._

Wasn't it dangerous? 

John came out of the batting cage behind him, his steps slow, hesitant. He was unsure about something—though it was unclear whether the source of the confusion were his own actions or Sherlock's reactions. 

"Probably best we call it a night, before we get arrested for trespassing," John said, a quick, forced little smile on his lips. "Wouldn't look too good on the front page of the _Post._ Might be tough to explain." 

"Mm," Sherlock agreed. He put his hands in his pockets, immediately regretted it. He was wearing gloves. His hands were not cold. Were he observing himself, he would have deduced insecurity, vulnerability. 

He took his hands out of his pockets, shifted his weight from one foot to another, cleared his throat. 

"Right," John said, nodding, his mind made up—and had there even been a decision to make? Some moment hanging in the air that he'd missed?

The thought filled him with an inexplicable panic and he took a quick step forward without actually deciding to, ricocheting off of John's shoulder, causing both of them to stumble into each other. 

"Oh," John said, "Sorry—"

Sherlock cut him off by dipping his head, pressing their lips together. 

John made a sound against his mouth, indecipherable. 

Sherlock froze. He had—he—

He had kissed John without _thinking_ about it. He didn't do anything without thinking about it, planning it, working it out. He hadn't even considered the possibility, had just stepped forward and acted, and that wasn't—he wasn't—

John's hands came up to fist in the lapels of his coat, pulling him closer, his lips soft, his breath warm. The tip of his nose brushed against Sherlock's. 

Warmth bloomed in his chest, derailing his thoughts entirely. 

He shut his eyes, nudged John's nose with his, a tentative move. Their kiss was chaste, mouths closed, barely moving against each other. Gentle. Wondering. 

He brought his hands up slowly, carefully, cradled John's face.

When they pulled apart it was just barely, breaths puffing warm into the space that had opened between them. John's eyes blinked open. His hands unclenched from Sherlock's coat, came up to cover Sherlock's own hands where they pressed against his cheeks instead.

Sherlock breathed, tipped forward, pressed his lips against John's forehead. 

"Baseball," he said, his lips moving against John's skin. "Definitely not boring." 

*

There was no one at the pool. 

Blue water closed over his head as Sherlock dove in, began a freestyle stroke towards the opposite side. The smell of chlorine was heavy in the warm, humid air. 

He liked to play the violin while thinking. Lately, he'd had very little worth thinking about. His mind rebelled at the stagnation. 

His landlord had classified what he'd been doing to the violin as less like _playing_ and far closer to _torturing_ , and had threatened him with eviction if he did not leave off tormenting the surrounding tenants immediately. 

He'd been tempted to ignore the demand. Instead, he'd tried to channel his aggression into physical activity. Running had occasionally worked. When it grew too hot for him to comfortably jog, he'd sought out the pool, wiped away all external distractions and sank peacefully into his mind palace while his body carved through the water. 

Today, he had things worth thinking about. 

Not the case. Not the work. John. 

There was a smile pulling persistently at the corner of his mouth, threatening him with a mouthful of chlorinated poolwater if he didn't manage to get his traitorous body back under control. 

He was _smiling._ Unconsciously. Had been doing it, off and on, all morning. 

It should have unsettled him. 

It did, on some level. But he found he didn't quite care.

He felt—what, exactly? Happy? Was this happiness? He certainly felt buoyant, in a way that had nothing to do with the water. Less than twenty-four hours prior, he'd been bored and miserable. John had come barging back into his life and had—changed that. Somehow. 

He doubted it was the baseball.

After he'd left the park, he'd spent hours wandering the streets, putting his disarranged thoughts back into order. John had—

And then he had—

He was smiling again. This was horrible. It had to stop immediately.

He broke the surface, breathing hard, hands scrabbling along the edge. Performed a quick mental diagnostic, estimated the time, debated kicking off for another lap. 

Someone cleared their throat. The sound was uncomfortably close to a laugh. 

He startled, whipping his head around towards the source of the sound. A slim man in a dark suit stood at the edge of the pool, a file folder clasped under one arm. 

He hadn't noticed the man come in. _He_ hadn't noticed. 

"Hello, Agent Holmes," the man said, smiling, rocking on the balls of his feet. His shoes were new, expensive, polished to a high sheen. He took no care to avoid the puddles of chlorinated water. 

Sherlock blinked at him for a moment, his brain kicking back into gear a bit too slowly for his preference. FBI, obviously, going by the folder and the fact that he knew Sherlock's name. How he'd known to find him at the pool might have been worth pursuing, but Lestrade was aware that Sherlock came here on occasion and may have sent someone to fetch him if a case had come up. 

Well. In the past he might have sent someone to fetch him if a case had come up. None of what Sherlock had been working on lately was, in any way, pressing. 

His visual appraisal complete, Sherlock grasped the ladder and hauled himself out of the pool in one swift motion. The man took a quick step back to keep his clothing out of splash range. It provided an additional opportunity of brief distraction, which Sherlock took immediate advantage of in order to study him further. 

He was green, clearly, an intriguing and somewhat irritating combination of overeager and cocky. 

He stepped forward, water dripping onto the ground. Held out his hand for the file.

The man gave him a startled look. 

"That is for me, correct?" Sherlock asked, raising his brows. "You're clearly not here to swim." 

"It's a developing situation—" 

Sherlock took the file, ignoring him as he continued to speak. He flipped through the pages. 

"Who's the agent in charge?" 

"That would be me," the man said, smiling brightly, rocking on the balls of his feet again. He stuck out his hand. "Brook. Richard Brook." 

Sherlock glanced at his hand, looked back down at the file. His interest sparked. "Clearly a mistake." 

"What was that?" 

"How long have you been with the Bureau, Agent Brook? A year?" 

"Six months." 

"Six months," he echoed. Shook his head, began striding towards the locker rooms. "Thank you for bringing over the file. I'll work this out with Lestrade." 

"Excuse me," Brook said, and some of the puppyish eagerness had gone out of his demeanor, replaced by a sullen, stubborn core that Sherlock could not help but admire at least a little bit. "I may be—green. But this is my case, Agent Holmes. My case. I'm the one who had to persuade AD Lestrade to let you on the team, not the other way around. So I'm not going anywhere." 

Sherlock stopped walking, turned back. "You requested me on this case?" 

"Yes." 

"You." 

"Yes," Brook said, and he was smiling a little bit now, an eager smile. 

"Why?"

"Because you have a certain reputation. And this seemed like your area of expertise." Brook smiled, bloodless lips pulling away from straight white teeth. "There are a lot of people who don't like you, Agent Holmes. But there are those of us in the organization who believe in your work. Who think that you haven't exactly been treated fairly." 

"This—" Sherlock nodded his head at the file. "—is a bombing. That's what you consider my area of expertise?" 

"The bombing? No. But the bomber…" Brook dragged the word out teasingly, as if he knew that Sherlock would pounce at the bait. The deliberate attempt at manipulation rankled, even moreso because it worked. 

"You've identified the bomber?" 

"There's a suspect," Brook said. "He's been contacting authorities. Taunting them. Name's Henry Knight." 

"Oh," Sherlock said, and his eyes went wide. " _Oh._ I—have the remains of the victim been examined? I want them sent to Quantico. To Agent John Watson. No one else. Understood?" 

Brook raised his brows, nodded. "Done." He hesitated for a moment. His eyes were very dark, almost black. The undulating poolwater reflected off of their depths. "I've requisitioned a car. We'll need to be on the road right away." 

Sherlock turned back towards the locker room, walking quickly, bare feet slapping on the damp floor. 

"I'll meet you outside in ten minutes," he called over his shoulder.

*

"This is an ugly one," the morgue assistant said, and John looked up from his paperwork.

"Just come in?" 

"Yep. Orders came in to make this one a priority. Specifically requested you as the lead pathologist on the case. They want answers right away." 

He pushed away from his desk, stood up. There was a part of him that was relieved; he'd have no trouble maintaining a somber demeanor through an autopsy, and it would give him something to focus on so that he didn't find himself smiling foolishly off into the middle distance. 

He'd been doing just that, off and on, since arriving at Quantico in the morning. People didn't generally grin in morgues. It was off-putting. 

Still. It was hard not to grin when he thought of Sherlock. Of the soft, careful way he'd kissed him, the way he'd cradled John's face like he was something fragile and precious. Of the shocked wonder in those pale eyes, a shy innocence that was as surprising as it was endearing. 

He'd seemed so off-kilter, pleased and earnest and tentative and terrified all at once. Smiling and clumsy and warm.

He'd kissed John one last time, ducking his head slowly, eyes wide and unblinking. Then he'd smiled, that small, private smile that only touched the corners of his mouth. 

"Good night, John," he'd said, his voice low, serious. Then he'd turned and disappeared into the darkness, coat fanning out behind him like—like some kind of brooding gothic hero. 

He'd watched him go, leaned against the chain link fencing of the batting cages, chuckled.

"Agent Watson?" 

He blinked, refocused on the attendant. He hoped he hadn't been smiling. Feared that he had. 

"Right behind you," he said. 

There was not much left of the body. 

He shut his eyes for a moment after unzipping the bag. Breathed. His hand gave a faint twitch. The lingering warm feelings from his strange and wonderful evening bled away. 

He'd seen damage like this before. In Afghanistan.

This looked like a suicide bomber. Like he'd been wearing an explosive vest. Christ, when had this happened? He hadn't heard anything on the news. 

He skimmed over the file. His gaze caught on Sherlock's name, attached as part of the investigation, just as he knew it would, eventually. He flushed up with warmth, shut his eyes for a moment. He opened his eyes again, focused, returned his attention to the file.

The remains were believed to belong to Ian Monkford, a forty-three year old car salesman whose wife had reported him missing two days prior. 

He'd been taken to a remote area and—and detonated. _Christ._

John cleared his mind, cracked his neck, got to work. 

*

Sherlock showered quickly, hot water sluicing over his skin, carrying off the stink of chlorine.

Henry Knight. 

He'd met Henry in the course of an investigation several years back. He'd claimed to have been an alien abductee, and had borne a fragile, damaged demeanor. He'd been undergoing regression hypnosis in an effort to reclaim missing memories. He'd caught Sherlock's attention because some of his missing memories involved the disappearance of a close relative, his father, in that particular case. 

Sherlock called up an image of Henry from his mind palace, examined his memory. Henry, pallid and wide-eyed. Unflattering haircut. A pleading, beseeching voice. Fragile, twitchy. Afraid of dogs. Afraid of his own shadow, seemingly. 

He couldn’t think of a person less likely to be a mad bomber.

Oh, this was going to be interesting.

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew. A brief breather for our boys before things kick into high gear. 
> 
> *  
>  **[Hips Before Hands](https://khorazir.tumblr.com/post/157373310748/i-want-to-believe-and-hips-before-hands)** by the incredible Khorazir ([lineart here](https://khorazir.tumblr.com/post/157036740848/hips-before-hands-lineart-of-my-first))
> 
> *
> 
> **[Sherlock and Agent Brook at the pool](https://hollysprite.tumblr.com/post/157468041606/fic-inspired-shopping)** (featuring an appearance by the famous red Speedo!) by HollySprite
> 
> *
> 
> As always, please feel free to stop by and say hi on [Tumblr](http://www.discordantwords.tumblr.com).


	8. New Players (Part 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one is a bit late. The S4 trailer broke me.

*

Brook was waiting for him just outside. 

Sherlock went out the back door, file in hand, hair still damp from his quick shower, avoiding him neatly. He dialed as he drove. 

"Irregular News," Wiggins said. 

"I need everything you can dig up for me on a former abductee," he said. "Henry Knight." He rattled off Henry's last known address from memory. 

"Sounds like you know him." 

"I've met him," Sherlock said. "Years back."

A brief rustling as Anderson picked up. "Any reason you're not going through official channels?" 

"I am," Sherlock said. "But you know as well as I do that official channels rarely provide the full story." 

"We'll call you back," Anderson said. 

Sherlock hung up, tossed his phone onto the passenger seat, accelerated. The body had been found in a rural area outside of Richmond, Virginia. He could likely be there in under two hours. 

*

There was a police cordon set up around a ramshackle little farmhouse. 

Sherlock flashed his badge as he got out of the car, drawing his coat tightly around him. His swept his eyes across the scene, registered his first impressions, drew out details. 

The main focus of attention seemed to be a flattened swath of corn plants, painted in gruesome rust tones. He narrowed his eyes, looked at the muddy earth, displaced both by the initial blast and the rush of police activity. 

Still, there were signs. 

The victim had walked into the corn. He'd walked slowly, small steps, stumbling, toes digging into damp ground. He'd been hesitant. Afraid. 

Sherlock's phone buzzed in his pocket. He glanced down at the screen. Lestrade. He ignored it, returned his attention to the mess amidst the corn, brushing past an irritated forensics tech to get a closer look. 

It had not been a large blast. He looked at the radius of damaged corn, the splashed gore against the standing plants. 

The splatter suggested the victim had been wearing the explosives. A vest or backpack of some kind. Enough to kill him, not enough to make a crater in the ground. A grenade lobbed at his feet would have kicked up more of a mess. 

He lifted his phone, took a quick snap of the scene, sent it to John. With any luck, he'd already begun his autopsy of the remains. Assuming Brook had gone ahead and made those arrangements prior to realizing he'd been ditched. 

"The investigator in charge?" he asked absently, and the forensics tech (still irritated), pointed him in the proper direction. 

He went over, introduced himself to Detective Ewart. Did not bother with pleasantries. 

Ewart had clearly returned from vacation recently. There was a fading tan on his face, his wrists. He was hunched up in a coat against the cold.

"What time did this happen?" 

"Some time late last night, we assume," Ewart said. "We've been interviewing neighbors—no one lives too close, but there are a few people who reported hearing what they thought were fireworks just after midnight." 

"Who owns the property?" 

"It's a foreclosure," he said. "Belongs to the bank." 

Sherlock grit his teeth. "Who owned it before the bank?" 

Ewart raised his brows. "We'll pull the records. We've already got teams on his apartment, his workplace. So far he hasn't been back. You think this guy has a personal connection to this property?"

"Won't know until we check," Sherlock said. "I was told he's made contact?" 

Ewart chewed his lip for a moment, studying him. "They haven't briefed you?"

"I was called in at the last minute. Just getting up to speed." 

"Right," Ewart said. "Well. The presumed victim—we're still waiting on a confirmed positive ID—is Ian Monkford. Used car salesman, works alone most nights. Last his wife heard from him, he was taking a client out for a test drive. He never came home. A man matching Henry Knight's description was caught on the security footage at the dealership."

Sherlock looked again at the mess in the corn, turned his attention to the house. "Was he held here?" 

"Looks like it. Someone stayed here recently, at the very least. We found blankets, fast food wrappers." 

"So Monkford didn't return home, his wife reported him missing, and then…?"

"We started getting phone calls. Weird ones."

"Weird how?" 

He shrugged. "I don't know, weird. Rambling. The kind of phone calls that a crazy person makes before they start blowing people up." 

"How remarkably insightful of you."

Ewart's brows drew together and he straightened up, offended. 

Sherlock spared a brief thought for John, who had always eased these sorts of interactions. 

"It was a lot of nonsense," Ewart said. "Rambling about people that weren't people. Hounds in the corn. If you can find something useful in that, great. That's what you FBI guys are supposed to be good at, right?"

He blinked. That was—that was oddly specific. "He used that word exactly? Hound?" 

"I don't know," Ewart said, his voice still clipped, irritated. "Feel free to go take a listen for yourself. I've got a lot to finish up here." 

Sherlock nodded absently, turned back for the car. 

_Rude,_ John chided, gently, in his ear. 

"Thank you, Detective Ewart," he called over his shoulder. 

*

John stripped off his gloves, dropped them into the receptacle. His neck was stiff, his eyes tired. He stretched, his spine popping, and trudged down the hallway to his tiny office. His chair squeaked as he sat down. 

He rubbed his eyes, opened his laptop to organize his notes. While waiting for it to boot up, he took his phone out of the top drawer, looked at it. 

There was a text from Sherlock.

The sight of Sherlock's name next to the little message symbol had him snapping to attention, earlier fatigue forgotten. 

It had been months. _Months_ since Sherlock had reached out to him. 

Granted, he'd apparently been tailing him, and it seemed that those issues had been—resolved—for better or worse the night before, but still. The sight of Sherlock's name on his screen tripped something within him, flooded him with a pleasant, unexpected warmth. 

He'd taken it for granted, during the time they'd worked together. He'd gotten so used to it, to the easy rhythm of communication they'd established, that its sudden loss had left him reeling. Stunned. Bereft. Moreso than any professional loss had the right to, really. 

He opened the message. Blinked down at a snapshot of a crime scene—flattened corn, splashes of blood, torn up earth.

It startled a laugh out of him, because of course, of _course_ Sherlock would reestablish regular communication with a photo like this. 

He squinted down at the picture. An explosion, no doubt. Small, controlled. Likely the site where the victim he'd just finished autopsying had been discovered. Given what he'd seen of the remains, the aftermath at the site was about what he'd expect. 

He thumbed out a quick response. 

_He was wearing the explosives. Small charge. Not trying for large-scale damage._

The response, immediate, as if Sherlock had been waiting for him. 

_Anything odd about the corpse? SH_

John frowned. 

_Other than the fact that he was in bits?_

He waited, staring hard at the screen as if he could make it react. No response came. 

*

Ewart had called ahead to the station, and an officer was waiting with the audio files that Sherlock had requested. He set himself up in a small office, shut the door against the daily hustle and bustle. The sound of ringing phones had begun to make his head ache. 

Four calls, they'd said. Henry Knight had made four calls before he'd blown Ian Monkford to bits out in the middle of a cornfield. 

It was difficult for him to visualize. Henry Knight, the Henry Knight he'd met—

A few years back, as he'd begun to confront his own fragmented memories surrounding Sherrinford's disappearance, he'd set out to document and catalog every possible case of alien abduction that he could get his hands on. He'd created accounts on various web communities and message boards, put out feelers. He'd advertised discreetly in various fringe publications (including _The Irregular News._ ) He'd delved into FBI records and discovered, to some strange mixture of horror and delight, that there were filing cabinets _full_ of unexplained phenomena, reports that had been received and dismissed as too out there to pursue. 

One of the archive secretaries had proven particularly susceptible to flattery and had helped him begin to gather files that proved relevant to his interests. He'd positively devoured the files. The work had consumed his every waking thought. His interest in serial killers and profiling work—the cases that had built his name--already waning, had withered and died. 

And then, of course Irene had sussed out what he'd been doing (nosy as she was), and she'd been interested enough to linger on the periphery for a while, until she'd gotten bored and taken a new assignment. 

He'd never held that against her. He knew a thing or two about boredom.

But Henry Knight had been one of the first abductees he'd come across that had been willing to talk to him. Henry had strange scars and mysterious memory lapses, large swathes of missing time, and deeply entrenched night terrors of gray men with black eyes coming to take him away. He spoke of bright lights, of paralysis, of helplessness.

And most interesting of all, he spoke of the first night he'd been taken, the night he'd lost his father. 

Henry had been young, early teens at most. His father had taken him camping, and they'd set their tent up in a grassy clearing under the stars. 

"The lights were so bright," he'd recounted to Sherlock, his face white and gleaming with sweat, his eyes large. "And my father, he—he tried to protect me. He told them. He told them they couldn't have me. But they—"

He'd been a trembling wreck, and Sherlock might have been irritated with the entire display had he not been so utterly fascinated. 

Because it twigged something in his memory, that talk of bright lights, of helplessness. It had happened to him, and it had happened to other people, all over the world. And if it had truly happened, there was an explanation to be found. And who better to find it than the FBI's foremost criminal profiler, the genius so awe-inspiring as to be viewed as something unnatural, a freak of nature? 

In any case, Henry had woken up in the woods with missing memories and scars behind his ears. His father had never come back at all. 

Sherlock had spoken with him several times over the course of his investigation, finding new leads to pursue, new nuggets of information that tied in with stories he'd begun to compile from other abductees. And Henry had—well. Henry had been frightened, and timid, and had simply wanted to move on with his life.

Eventually, there had been nothing left to do. Sherlock had moved on, frustrated at his lack of progress. He'd taken on more and more of the cases deemed X Files, leaning heavily on his carefully cultivated political connections whenever he encountered resistance from the Bureau. And from there, he'd toiled quite happily for years, seeking truth in stories that most people found too uncomfortable to even contemplate as fiction. 

Henry Knight. A bomber. 

He slipped on a pair of headphones, pressed play on the first audio recording.

>   
>  OPERATOR: 911 what's your emergency?  
>  CALLER: There's no stopping it.  
>  OPERATOR: Do you have an emergency, sir?  
>  CALLER: They're here now. They're among us. Walking around.  
>  OPERATOR: I'm sorry, sir, I'm not understanding.  
>  CALLER: Time bombs. Just ticking away. And no one understands. No one sees.  
>  OPERATOR: Sir?  
>  (CALL DISCONNECTED)  
> 

Sherlock sat back in his chair, closed his eyes. The voice was Henry's. He was fairly sure of that, although it had been years since he'd spoken to the man. His voice carried a distinctive tone, a tremulous whine.

Time bombs, ticking away. Well, Knight had turned a man into a bomb, quite literally. Fortunately for the population at large (although not fortunately for poor Ian Monkford), he'd done so in a remote area. Would he follow the same M.O. if he were to act again? Or had that been a test? A trial run? 

He pressed play on the next recording.

>   
>  OPERATOR: 911, what's your emergency?  
>  CALLER: There are hounds in the corn.  
>  OPERATOR: Excuse me, sir? Do you have an emergency?  
>  CALLER: Hounds among the chickens. They bite, you know. They have teeth.  
>  OPERATOR: Sir, are you reporting an animal attack?  
>  CALLER: There are people among us who aren't people. I know the truth. Soon, you will too.  
>  (CALL DISCONNECTED)  
> 

An involuntary shudder worked its way up Sherlock's spine. There was something about the way that Henry said the word _hound_ that—

Well. No sense denying it. The word was archaic, an odd choice unless one was specifically describing a hunting dog. Or an experimental hallucinogenic drug. 

He pressed play on the third recording.

>   
>  OPERATOR: 911, what's your emergency?  
>  CALLER: I've got one.  
>  OPERATOR: You've got one what, sir?  
>  CALLER: One of the bombs. He's ticking but that's going to stop.  
>  OPERATOR: Where are you calling from?  
>  CALLER: You won't find me. You can't stop me. I have to do this. They told me I have to do this.  
>  OPERATOR: Who told you, sir?  
>  CALLER: They did. The light.  
>  (SOUND OF SCUFFLE)  
>  CALLER: It's fighting me, but not for long. It's not real.  
>  (INDISCERNIBLE SHOUTING IN BACKGROUND)  
>  OPERATOR: Sir, is everything all right? Is someone with you?  
>  CALLER: My name is Henry Knight, and I'm going to be known as the man who saved our world.  
>  (CALL DISCONNECTED)  
> 

The shouting was, no doubt, Ian Monkford. A man matching Knight's description had been identified on the security footage from Monkford's auto dealership.

They. 

_They'd_ told him he had to do it. 

Sherlock frowned, ran the conversation through his head again. Knight sounded completely detached from reality. Other than his voice, unmistakable, there was very little in these conversations that tied him to the man he'd once met. 

He pressed play on the fourth recording.

>   
>  OPERATOR: 911, what's your emergency?  
>  CALLER: I don't want to do this.  
>  OPERATOR: Sir? Do what?  
>  CALLER: It's hard—he looks like a human being. He screams like a human being. I know he isn't. I know he's—I know. But he looks so real.  
>  (INDISTINGUISHABLE SHOUTING IN BACKGROUND)  
>  OPERATOR: Sir, where are you calling from?  
>  CALLER: It doesn't matter. The hounds are in the corn.  
>  (LOUD SOUND)  
>  OPERATOR: Sir? Sir? Was that an explosion? Is anyone hurt? Sir?  
>  (CALL DISCONNECTED)  
> 

Well. Other than some interesting language choices, that hadn't been particularly helpful at all.

Someone knocked on the door, a gentle rap of knuckles against wood. He took the headphones off, looked up. 

Brook stood in the doorway, arms folded over his chest. 

"Ah, good," Sherlock said. "You made it. I think that—" 

"Let's get one thing straight," Brook said, slamming the door behind him and leaning against it, his face taut with anger. "I don't appreciate being ditched like someone's bad date." 

"Must have been a misunderstanding."

"The only one misunderstanding here is you," Brook said, and there was nothing of the naïve enthusiasm that he'd displayed at the pool. "This is my case. I'm inviting you along, as a favor—"

"Oh, you shouldn't have." 

"—you are not the one calling the shots, here." 

"Just trying to get a head start on our investigation," Sherlock said. He favored Brook with a bright, false smile. 

"I know a little something about you," Brook said, and his voice had gone sly. "You're in a bit of trouble, aren't you? You're hanging on by the skin of your teeth. One more little push, and off you pop." 

Sherlock straightened up, discomfort prickling up his spine. He had a sudden suspicion that he'd underestimated Brook, and the realization was both unsettling and at least mildly thrilling.

"If I make a formal complaint, that's it for you, isn't it?" Brook's voice had dropped down to a whisper, startling in its vehemence. "And in spite of all of this—I actually still sort of admire you. They tell stories about you in the academy, you know." 

"So I hear," Sherlock said. He sat very still in his chair, waited for Brook to finish his song and dance. 

"Let's try this again," Brook said. "Wipe the slate clean. What do you say?" 

He was smiling again, his face once more looking young and pleased. There was a bit of a childish bounce to him. Puppyish.

Sherlock studied him for a moment, revised his original estimations. Green, yes, but certainly not naïve. Brook was smart, very smart. Lofty aspirations. A distinct lack of shame. Someone who'd be perfectly comfortable lying, threatening and bullying his way to the top. No, not just comfortable. _Gleeful._

It was refreshing, in a way, to see that all on display. Plenty of morons set out with similar aspirations to Brook that lacked the brainpower to see it through. Rare to encounter the full package. 

"Fine," he said, keeping his voice clipped. No need for Brook to see that his power play had been admired, appreciated. 

*

John worked on his notes. 

He typed slowly, frequently rewinding his little digital recorder to listen to his own observations again.

He was being more thorough than usual. Not that he wasn't ordinarily thorough. But this case—Sherlock's name on the paperwork, the text asking about the corpse—something felt off. He was missing something. 

The remains had been ordinary. Well. Ordinary for a man who'd been strapped with explosives and blown up. John had found nothing in his investigation that would dispute those findings. 

_Anything odd about the corpse?_ Sherlock had asked, and had then cut off contact. 

What could be odd about the corpse? 

Sherlock would not have asked if he hadn't had a reason. He didn't do anything without a reason, even if it seemed convoluted or strange to the average mind. 

Still frowning to himself, he picked up his phone, dialed. 

"Agent Hooper." 

"Agent Hooper, hi, it's John Watson." 

"Oh! Agent Watson, hi," she said. "Haven't heard from you or Agent Holmes in a while." 

"Yeah, well—" he trailed off, cleared his throat. Realized he didn't quite know what to say. 

"Erm, did you call for a reason, or—?"

"Yes, actually." John winced at his own hesitance. "I've just finished up an autopsy on a victim, explosion—"

"Oh. Messy." 

"Yes. Ehm. Very. In any case, I think I want to have a full PCR run up on the victim."

"Sure, yeah, I'll put a rush on it. Anything in particular you're looking for?"

He hesitated. "Anything odd." 

A strangled little bark of laughter. "Right. Not surprised. Um, so you'll—?" 

"I'll have a sample sent right over." 

"Good. I'll call you when I have results." 

He hung up, leaned back in his chair, pinched the bridge of his nose. There was a strange feeling in his chest, a tug. It felt alarmingly like worry. 

It was absurd. He hadn't worked with Sherlock for months, and while he'd certainly _thought_ about him from time to time, he hadn't been seized up with fear that something might happen to him. But now, seeing Sherlock's name on paperwork, knowing he was mixed up in something _odd_ , knowing he was out there without John to back him up, it was—unsettling. 

All at once Quantico felt like a trap, and he, the caged animal. Pacing, antsy. Ready to climb out of his own skin from the sheer wrongness of it all. 

He should be by Sherlock's side through this, not waiting uselessly behind the scenes. 

He gave a sharp kick to his little waste basket. It tipped over, bits of crumpled paper and tissue spilling out. 

He sighed, bent to clean it. Then he sat back down at his desk, resumed his notes. He typed slowly, one eye on his phone screen. It remained dark.

*

"Tell me about Henry Knight," Brook said. He'd sat down at the little desk across from Sherlock, leaning back comfortably in his chair, legs stretched out in front of him. 

They had listened the audio files again, all four of them, one right after another. 

There was something strange in Knight's speech pattern. It was flat, stilted, emphasis in all the wrong places. Sherlock could not quite put his finger on what caused it. 

"What do you want to know?" 

"Was he really abducted by aliens?" Brook leaned forward, propped his elbows on the table, leaned his chin on his hands, as bright-eyed and interested as a schoolgirl.

"No way to know for certain." 

"But you have an opinion," Brook smirked. "Of course you have an opinion. What's that saying? Opinions are like—" 

"Yes, obviously, I have an opinion." 

"Well?"

Sherlock cleared his throat, looked down at his hands for a moment before lifting his gaze to meet Brook's. "After interviewing the subject extensively, as well as viewing his medical records, my opinion was that his story was genuine." 

"Relatable, too, I'm sure." 

He looked sharply at Brook. "Pardon?" 

"Only that there are certain—similarities. Between your story and his." Brook twirled his hand in the air, looking bored, indulgent. "Missing family members and such." 

His history was not a secret, Sherlock knew. His entire reputation had been built up on the foundation of his sad story. Sherlock Holmes, lost his brother as a kid, so sad, went into law enforcement. Sherlock Holmes, criminal profiler who lost his mind a little bit, so sad, and decided his brother had been kidnapped by aliens. Sherlock Holmes, lunatic, draining Bureau resources to pursue fantasies with a badge and a gun. 

Still, he didn't like the smirk on Brook's face. 

"If you've got something you'd like to say, please do so immediately," he said. "I'd prefer not to spend the rest of the day listening to you make vague allusions. We've got a bomber to catch." 

Brook looked at least mildly abashed. He cleared his throat. 

There was a knock on the door, short, sharp. Detective Ewart poked his head in. He was clearly just back from the crime scene. There was fresh mud on his shoes, the smell of stale coffee and old cigarettes around him. 

"There's been another one." 

Sherlock stood up. The chair legs squealed against the floor. 

"Where?" Brook asked.

"Just outside of D.C.," Ewart said. "Another quiet spot, no witnesses. No phone call this time."

"Get me the location," Sherlock said, already pulling on his coat. "And have the remains sent to Quantico, care of Agent John Watson." 

*

John snatched up his phone without even looking at the screen. 

"John," Sherlock said, and the sound of his voice was so welcome that he felt a smile creeping onto his face in spite of the circumstances. 

"Sherlock, what's going on?" 

"I'm en route to another crime scene. He's done it again—I'll know more when I've gotten on the scene. I need you to do the autopsy." 

"Yeah," John blew out a breath of air between his teeth. "Yeah, all right. Just—have them send it over. What can you tell me?" 

"Infuriatingly little at this juncture." 

There was music in the background, John realized. A muffled noise, rustling, a quiet voice. The music ceased.

"Turn left here," Sherlock said.

"Hm?"

"Just talking to Agent Brook," Sherlock said. "John, this—"

"Agent Brook?"

"Yes. We're, um—" Sherlock hesitated for a moment. "Working the case together." 

John pressed his lips together, nodded. It was inevitable, after all, that Sherlock would eventually begin working with another partner. Nothing to get territorial over. Even if—

"Right," he said, cutting off his own train of thought. "Is there anything specific you want me to look for, Sherlock, because—" 

"Anything anomalous," Sherlock said. "The person who's doing this, I've met him before. He's a multiple abductee with a credible history. He's made phone calls to police. It sounds like nonsense, mostly, but he makes reference to 'people who aren't people.' We've seen—we've seen things. That might be relevant." 

John thought of Sherrinford, tipping off of the bridge into the cold waters below. Hatherley and the others, indistinguishable men with identical faces and strange physiology. A tall, twisted nightmare of a man who could change his appearance at will. 

People who weren't people, indeed. 

"Right. Well, I can tell you right now that Ian Monkford has not, to my knowledge, dissolved into a puddle of green goo post-examination." 

Sherlock made a noise that might have been a laugh, a soft exhalation, just a puff of incredulous air. 

"Not really the kind of thing that could go unnoticed around here," he added. Smiled, even though Sherlock couldn't see him. 

"No," Sherlock said. "I suppose not." 

Silence fell, punctuated only by Sherlock's quiet breaths in John's ear. 

"I sent a sample of Monkford's blood to Agent Hooper," John said. He was holding his phone quite tightly, as if by pressing it harder against his ear he could somehow will himself closer to Sherlock. "Asked her to run a full screening." 

Sherlock made another sound, a quiet, pleased noise. 

"I'll let you know when I have the results," John said.

*

Sherlock ended the call, slipped the phone back into his coat pocket. 

Brook was driving. He had, apparently, not trusted Sherlock not to run off and leave him behind again. That, in Sherlock's estimation, was a fair enough assessment of the situation. 

They were moving along at a fast clip, Ewart's car ahead of them, lights flashing. 

Brook glanced over, confirmed that Sherlock had ended his call, and reached out to turn the volume knob on the radio back up. He'd tuned in to a 70s station, the Bee Gees wailing about staying alive.

Sherlock grimaced, turned his head to look out the window. 

"Anything?" Brook asked.

Sherlock glanced over at him, frowned. "Nothing of note. Yet." 

"Shame," Brook said. "Guess Knight really is crazy." 

"He's driving people out to rural areas and blowing them up," Sherlock said. "Of course he's crazy." 

"Not if they aren't really people." A slow curl of his lips, a sly little smile. His gloved fingers tapped a staccato dance on the steering wheel. "You and Dr. Watson seem quite close." 

"I've worked with him in the past, yes." 

"Mm, but most people who have worked with you in the past aren't in such a rush to do so again in the future, are they?"

"Are you implying you'll be in no great rush to work with me again in the future?"

Brook smiled again. "Seems like Dr. Watson was perfectly willing to drop everything to help you out with this case." 

"He's at Quantico, demonstrating autopsy techniques to academy students. What, exactly, is there to drop?" 

"No need to get testy, I'm just making conversation." 

"I'd prefer you didn't." 

"Loyal," Brook said, nodded, his mouth pursing up in a rueful little smile. "That's touching." 

Ahead of them, Ewart took a hard right turn, wheels spraying up gravel. Brook followed, their little car bumping over a roughly paved road.

Up ahead, Sherlock could see lazily flashing lights, a mill of police activity. They pulled to a stop. 

The cold air was bracing as he got out of the car, eyes skimming over the surroundings. 

No farmhouse, no barn. No shelter at all. Just gentle rolling hills, decrepit paddock fencing, the wood rotting and shifting out of place. 

There was a patch of grass that had been blown flat, a splash of gore against the ground. 

Ewart led the way, past the team that had already set up, past the crime scene tape. 

"We're just finishing up with the photographs," one of the officers said as they approached. "Then we'll get the body on the way to Quantico. Just like you asked." 

"When was the body found?"

"A man out walking his dogs came across the scene, called it in this morning." 

Sherlock struck out across the grass, the wind buffeting his face. There were footprints in the damp earth, too many, the ground trampled. 

There, the good Samaritan and his dog, purposeful steps that drew up short as they approached the carnage. Difficult to differentiate between the others. Frustration mounted and he turned his attention to the corpse.

Female, he thought, although it was hard to tell. Little numbered evidence cards had been placed around the scene. 

"Any idea who this is?"

"We won't know until there's a positive ID, but a purse and identification found discarded a few feet away belong to a Connie Prince," Ewart said.

Sherlock frowned down at the remains, turned away.

"Why these people in particular?" he asked, not speaking to anyone, really, just thinking out loud. 

"He's not picking them at random," Brook said, his voice startlingly close.

Sherlock turned, narrowed his eyes. "What makes you say that?"

"You think he just walks down the street, sees someone, and decides _not a person, better blow them up?_ Doesn't seem very likely." Brook shrugged, looked up at the sky. Clouds had rolled in, threatening rain. "She and Ian Monkford have something in common, I'd bet. And that's how Henry Knight knew about them." 

Sherlock whirled away from him. "The purse. I need to see her purse." 

One of the officers pointed him towards it. He snapped on a pair of latex gloves, rummaged through the contents. Makeup, a change purse, a fat purple wallet. Three credit cards in the wallet. Cash. She had not been robbed. 

His fingers brushed across the yielding surface of a business card and he paused, drew it out. 

"Dr. Louise Mortimer," he read. "Psychologist." 

He flipped the card over. An appointment date and time had been scrawled in blue pen. 

He looked up sharply, his gaze finding Ewart. "Find out if Ian Monkford was seeing a therapist." 

*

"Agent Watson, the body has arrived." 

John nodded, looked down at his watch. The day had begun to crawl inexorably by. 

He prepared himself, drew on his gloves and mask, looked down at the sad remains that had been wheeled into the autopsy bay. 

"I think she's going to miss her appointment," Sherlock said, his voice deep and rumbling from the far corner of the room.

John jumped, snapped his head up. 

Sherlock was standing against the wall, twirling something between his fingers. A business card, wrapped in a plastic evidence bag. 

"Sherlock," John said, a smile creeping on to his face in spite of himself. 

"Ah, good, I see you still remember my name," Sherlock said. He was smiling too, though, a fragile, hesitant turn to his lips. 

"What are you doing here?" 

"Wanted to make sure the remains got here," Sherlock said. "And waiting for a call back from Dr. Louise Mortimer." 

"Am I supposed to know that name?" John asked, tearing his gaze away from Sherlock, looking back down at the body. The unfortunate woman had been wearing a similar explosive vest as Monkford. Small blast, localized. Not the kind of thing that could bring down a building, but certainly enough to tear apart a human being. 

"Connie Prince," Sherlock said, nodding down at the table. "And Ian Monkford had something in common. They shared a therapist." 

"Ah," John said. Sherlock had stepped closer, warmth from his skin radiating into the small distance between them. "Well. That's—that's definitely worth following up on." 

"She has office hours at George Washington University Hospital during the week," Sherlock said.

"Is Henry Knight one of her patients?" 

"That's what I intend to find out." 

"Am I interrupting something?" the voice that came from the door was smooth, lilting with amusement. 

John blinked, looked away from Sherlock. There was a man lingering in the doorway. He was slim, short in stature, dark suit, dark hair. He had his hands hooked in the waistband of his trousers. He was smiling. 

"This is Agent Brook," Sherlock said. His voice was flat, utterly devoid of inflection. 

John glanced at him, then back at Brook.

"Good to meet you," Brook said, approaching with his hand out. 

John glanced down at his own hands, ensconced in latex gloves. "Yeah, you too." He moved past Brook without extending his hand, checked the calibration on the organ scale. 

Sherlock followed, almost as if magnetized, keeping a close distance between them. 

"These remains appear human, Sherlock," John said, keeping his voice low. He could see Brook out of the corner of his eye, straining to hear and was struck with a startling wave of irrational dislike. He dropped his voice even further. "Just like Ian Monkford. I'm not seeing any evidence of. Um. What we saw in Philadelphia." 

Brook's phone began to ring. He made no move to answer it. Went on smirk-smiling in their direction, just as comfortable as could be.

John glanced sharply at him. 

Brook's smile widened, turned apologetic, took his phone out of his pocket. Turned away to speak. 

"How's the new partner working out?" the words were out before John could even think about what he was saying. He winced at his own petulant tone. 

Sherlock studied him, face expressionless. "He's all right. Clever enough. Terrible taste in music. He could use a bit more seasoning, but he's more open to extreme possibilities—" 

"Than I am?"

Sherlock blinked. "Than I assumed he'd be." 

Chagrined, John looked down at the ground. What was _wrong_ with him? One kiss and he's throwing tantrums in the morgue like a teenager with a crush? 

He cleared his throat, tried to save face. "Must be nice. Not having someone poking holes in all your theories." 

"Surprised I put up with you for as long as I did, really," Sherlock said. His voice was mild, disinterested, but there was a small, sad little smile playing on his lips. 

Brook cleared his throat. 

John glanced over again. Brook was watching Sherlock quite intently. He held up his phone, waggled it in the air. 

"You should go," John said.

Sherlock made an irritated noise, looked back down at John. He opened his mouth, shut it again. He seemed, oddly, as reluctant to leave as John was to see him go. 

"All right," he said. He did not step away. 

"God, just elope already," Brook said. He yawned. 

"Excuse me?" John's head snapped up. 

Brook gave him a flat look. "Just kidding." He waggled the phone again. "I've got Dr. Mortimer on the phone." 

Sherlock beelined for him, plucked the phone right out of his hand. "Dr. Mortimer, this is Agent Holmes with the FBI. I need to speak with you about one of your patients—" 

He pushed through the swinging door and out into the hallway, brow furrowed up with concentration. John watched him go, caught for a moment by the familiar sight of him, coat flapping behind like a cape. Then he turned his attention to Brook, who was still lingering, watching him with that odd flat expression. 

It was unpleasant, vaguely reptilian.

"Can I help you with something?" he asked, finally. 

Brook shook his head, pursed his lips. "No." 

John cleared his throat, uncomfortable. He turned back to the corpse. After a moment, he looked up again. Brook was gone. 

*

"I've been following the news," Dr. Mortimer said. "I just can't believe that _Henry Knight_ could possibly be responsible for this." 

Sherlock walked as he talked, trailing down the hallway, leaving John and the morgue behind. He listened closely to her tone of voice, trying to read between the lines. "He gave his name in a phone call to police, and has been positively identified on security footage with one of the victims." 

"I'm finding that hard to believe." 

He did as well, but facts were facts and there was little point in prevaricating over it. 

"Did he know Ian Monkford or Connie Prince?" 

"No," she said, her voice choked, almost tearful. "No, he never—" 

"When was the last time you spoke with Henry?" 

She breathed out, a frustrated sound. "Um, not for a while. A long time. Years." 

He blinked. That was not the answer he'd been expecting. "Is there any way he could have interacted with Ian Monkford or Connie Prince while in your office?"

"No," she said. "Look, he—he was a patient of mine, years ago. He was doing well. He discontinued treatment. I haven't seen or spoken to him since." She took another unsteady breath. "He doesn't have violence in him, Agent Holmes." 

"You just said you haven't seen him for years," he said. "So, perhaps, you're not the best judge of that." 

"I—"

"Monkford and Prince," he said. "Why were they seeing you?"

"I can't share that information—" 

"They are dead," he said. "And were likely targeted through their association with you. I'd say it's your responsibility to help us prevent this from happening again." 

"Um," she said. She sighed. There was faint rustling on the line, the distant sound of passing voices. The sound of a door clicking shut. "There were certain—similarities. Between Ian Monkford and Connie Prince. And Henry, of course." 

"What kind of similarities?"

"They'd never met," she said. "But. Their stories—they—believed that someone. Someone or some _thing_ , had taken them. Performed experiments on them." She made an unhappy noise. "It was disturbing. To say the least." 

"What kind of experiments?" 

"Unpleasant ones," she snapped. "Look, I'm not going to get into intimate detail with you. But if you think they're being targeted because of me, then it has to be because of this. Both Ian Monkford and Connie Prince had mentioned feelings of paranoia recently. They thought they were being watched, that they might be taken again."

"Do you have anyone else with a similar story?"

"I—"

"Dr. Mortimer, please." 

"I'm not sure. No one recent. I'll have to check my notes." 

"I don't think you understand—" 

"I don't think _you_ understand that I can't just—call this information up out of my brain like some kind of computer. No one has shared a similar story with me recently. It's possible that I've spoken to others, in the past, who believed themselves to be abductees. Like Henry. Now, if you don't mind, I have a patient waiting for me. I will call you back if there is anything else I can provide for you." 

She hung up without waiting for him to respond. 

He frowned. Pressed his fingers to his mouth, shut his eyes. 

She was lying about something. But what?

"Where to?" Brook asked, his voice jolting Sherlock out of his thoughts. His shoes clicked on the floor as he approached, walking at a leisurely pace.

Sherlock absently handed him his phone back. Brook took it, looked down at the screen, then back up with a small smile that he could not quite be bothered to parse. 

He had not lied to John. Brook was clever, and had not been entirely unbearable over the course of the investigation. But there was something about him, something uncomfortably smirking, that felt almost as though he were playing a role. That an entirely different personality simmered beneath his skin, always a hair's breadth away from being revealed. 

He wasn't terribly interested in revealing it.

His phone buzzed. Pleased for a reason to take his attention away from Brook, he picked it up.

"Holmes." 

"It's Wiggins." 

"Ah," he said, delighted. "Have you found something on Knight?" 

"Some things that may be of interest," Wiggins said. "We did a property search. The farmhouse where the first victim was found—that belonged to his grandmother. It was foreclosed a few years back, the bank can't seem to get rid of it." 

"Does he own any other property? Any place he might have gone to ground?"

"Nothing that we can turn up. If he's hiding, he's doing a fine job of it." 

"What else have you found?" 

 

"He has no criminal record, no real history of any kind. You probably already knew that. He's made a few posts on an alien abductee support forum, and his social media presence is sort of heavy on the cat memes, but there's nothing that seems especially alarming. Definitely not anything that could have predicted this." 

"Anything else?"

"We might have pulled his phone records." 

Raz picked up the line. "He's not using his phone anymore, obviously, if he has one at all, it must be a burner. But in the last few months he's made a fairly high volume of calls to one number." 

"Who was he contacting?" 

"We looked it up. It's a woman—a therapist, actually. Dr. Louise Mortimer. He's calling her personal phone, not her office line." 

"And you said he'd been in contact recently?"

"Right up until he fell off the grid and started blowing people up." 

He took the phone away from his ear, caught Brook's eye. "We're going to the hospital. I want to speak to Mortimer in person." He returned his attention to the phone. "Thanks for the information. I'll be in touch." 

He hung up, started towards the exit.

"Don't you want to say goodbye to Dr. Watson first?"

Sherlock blinked, furrowed his brow. "What?" 

"He's just down the hall," Brook said.

"Yes," Sherlock said slowly. "I am aware of that. Are you attempting to imply something?" 

"Me?" Brook looked bemused. "Not at all. I just didn't want to be rude." 

Sherlock frowned at him for a moment longer. "We have to get to the hospital."

"All right, sure." 

"Now." 

"A good plan." 

"Before her shift is over." 

"Lead the way," Brook said, and smiled. 

*

It was well after seven by the time John finished the autopsy on Connie Prince. He staggered back into his office, dimly aware that the sound he was hearing was the ringing of his phone. 

He thudded down into his chair, picked it up.

"Watson."

"Agent Watson it's—erm—Agent Hooper. I left you a message earlier, but—"

He rubbed a hand over his eyes, looked at the blinking message indicator on his phone. "I was in an autopsy." 

"Oh, right. Connie Prince, yeah? I started the tests on her sample, too." 

"Did you find something in Ian Monkford's blood?"

"Erm," she said. "You could say that. It's…kind of weird, actually." 

"Weird how?" 

"Well. You remember that—um. Case, you and Agent Holmes had a while back?"  
He smiled, tired, but still unable to muster up any real impatience towards Molly Hooper. Her work was every bit as impeccable as her communication was terrible, like some kind of strange balancing of the scales. "You'll have to be more specific." 

"You and Agent Holmes had me run a sample, after you both got back from Oregon. About a year and a half ago?" 

A year and a half ago. Their first case. Bellefleur.

"What about it?" he asked, feeling cold settle into the pit of his stomach. 

"It's the same. I mean—not genetically, it's obviously a different person. But the—erm—anomalies present are very similar." 

He pinched his brow, shut his eyes. "The branched DNA?" 

"Yes," she said, sounding relieved that she didn't have to explain. "It's like a genetic marker—inactive in his bloodstream, now, but very much present. It's so strange—I've never quite seen anything like this. Except. You know. That one time. With the sample." 

"Thanks," he said. His teeth worried at his chapped lower lip. "Look, when you get the results back on Connie Prince, can you let me know right away?" 

"Sure," she said.

He hung up, dialed Sherlock. 

"John," he said, answering on the first ring. "What is it?" 

"I just spoke with Agent Hooper. The blood test results came back on Ian Monkford—you were right. It is anomalous." 

"Anomalous how?" 

"Branched DNA, Sherlock. Just like those kids in Bellefleur." 

Sherlock drew in a sharp breath. "Dr. Mortimer said that both Monkford and Prince believed themselves to be abductees." 

"There might be some truth to their stories," John allowed. "She's running the same tests on Connie Prince's blood. We should know soon." 

"Thank you," Sherlock said, his voice quiet. He disconnected the call. 

John pinched his brow, looked around his darkened office. After a long moment, he flipped his laptop open, opened a new file to record his notes.

*

Sherlock's phone began ringing again immediately, and he smiled indulgently as he answered. "Forget something?" 

"Agent Holmes?" 

"Detective Ewart. What is it?" Sherlock straightened in his seat, glanced over at Brook, who gave every appearance of concentrating on the road. 

"There's a situation unfolding at George Washington University Hospital."

"We're headed over there right now, actually." 

"Henry Knight is there," Ewart said. "He's taken hostages. The rest of the facility is being evacuated."

Sherlock took the phone away from his ear, looked at Brook. "Drive faster." 

Brook raised his brows, stepped on the gas.

*

The scene was chaos. 

Sherlock pushed through a crowd of people, not bothering to see if Brook followed. He spotted Ewart by a police van, speaking with a group of SWAT officers in tactical gear.

"They're holed up in the east wing of the hospital, here—" Ewart had spread a blueprint out on a folding table, stabbed down at it with one fingertip. "Fourth floor. Our guys have tried ringing the nurses' station, but no one is picking up the phone." 

"How many hostages?" Sherlock asked. Behind him, he was conscious of Brook, walking around the small space, his appraising gaze sliding over the officers in their gear, the press of the interested crowd beyond.

"We have no way of knowing for certain," Ewart said. "Witnesses say he intercepted Dr. Mortimer in this hallway, here. He brandished his weapon, and, when she resisted, fired a shot into the ceiling. She went with him, and everyone who was able started running in the opposite direction." 

"There will be patients, of course," Brook said, his voice flat, almost bored. "People unable to leave their rooms." 

"We've evacuated the surrounding areas," Ewart agreed. "There are six critical care patients in these rooms here—" he pointed again, "—that we can't get to. Hospital administration is conducting staff headcounts now, but we have to assume that he's taken multiple hostages." 

"Security cameras?" Sherlock asked.

"In the hallways. None in the individual offices. We've got eyes on it, but so far no movement." Ewert shook his head. He looked tired, wan even under his tan. "We can't gas the halls, we might kill those patients. If we send a team in, there's nothing to say he won't blow the whole place sky high. Our team is mobilizing to an upper floor, we're going to try to drill in and see if we can get eyes on his location." 

"Send me in," Sherlock said. 

Ewert blinked. "What?" 

"I've met him, I think I can get him to talk to me. You're right—if he's as unstable as his phone calls would suggest, a SWAT team storming in is just going to make him flip the switch. You'll get all of those people killed." 

"What are you doing?" Brook asked. He looked surprised.

"I want to talk to him," Sherlock said. "You have a camera? Something I can wear? I'll try to get you a visual of the room. If I can't get him to stand down, at least then you'll know what you're dealing with." 

Ewert hesitated, then nodded. "We've got something." He turned away, spoke to one of the officers standing against the van. 

"What are you doing?" Brook asked again. 

Sherlock turned back to look at him. "Well. He's not answering his phone, and I need to talk to him. Mortimer, too. This seems the most expedient way." 

Brook snorted with laughter. "That's actually brilliant." 

"Yes, I rather thought so," Sherlock agreed. He turned back as Ewart approached with a flak jacket and some kind of fiber optic camera rig. There was a sour, heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach. He ignored it, slipping off his suit jacket and strapping himself into the vest. It was heavy, and tucked snugly against his chest.

"Don't do anything crazy," Brook said. He sounded amused, his voice almost singsong.

Sherlock ignored him, looking at the blueprints, already planning his route into the hospital. 

"Right," he said, straightening up. He smoothed his shirt under the flak jacket, started towards the entrance. 

"Good luck," Ewart said. There was a grimness to his voice that Sherlock chose not to dwell on.

*

The hallways were empty, silent. The only sound his own footsteps, the rustle of his clothing, the quiet hush of his breathing, the thump of his own heart in his chest.

It was surreal, wrong, somehow, the empty nurses' stations, quiet rooms devoid of the beep of monitors, the buzz of activity that permeated hospitals at all hours of the day.

He took the stairs, his steps light, his hand loose on the railing. No sense startling Knight with the ding of an elevator.

The air was different in the east wing. Heavy, alive. There were people here; the unevacuated patients, asleep in their rooms, monitors quietly chirping out their vitals. He counted his steps as he moved down the hall, listened for breathing, for movement, for any sign of Knight. 

He stopped outside of a closed door. There was a plate on the wall that read STAFF ONLY. 

A locker room or break room of some kind, he assumed. Not a medicine cabinet, that was at the other end of the hall. 

The light shifted under the door. There was someone inside. 

He stepped to the side, leaned against the wall. 

"Henry?" he asked. His voice, though hushed, still seemed much too loud in the cryptlike quiet. 

A thump, a startled exclamation. He listened carefully. Two voices—no, three. One against the far wall, one right in front of the door. Another to his left. 

"Henry Knight," he tried again. "My name is Sherlock Holmes. You may remember me—" 

The door creaked in the frame. Someone pressed against it, hands rustling against the wood. 

"Agent Holmes." Henry's voice, nasal, tremulous. "I remember you." 

"Good," Sherlock said. "That's good." 

"Why are you here?"

"You've been causing some trouble." 

"I'm trying to help." 

"Then let me help you." 

Hesitation. Henry's rapid breaths through the door. "You can't. How could you help me?"

"Tell me what you need help with," Sherlock said. "And then we'll see." 

"We're under attack," Henry said. "And no one knows it. There are—there are bombs, living among us. Waiting for the right moment." 

"How do you know this, Henry?" 

"They told me."

"Have you been taken again?" 

"No," Henry said, and he laughed. It was a miserable sound, hiccupping into a sob at the end. "No, they haven't come back for me. Yet. But I _know._ And they're coming. They said they were coming. Told me to be ready."

Sherlock considered. Some abductees believed that aliens communicated with them through implants, telepathy, mind control. Dreams. 

"Are they in your head, Henry?" 

Another hiccupping sob.

"Who do you have in there with you?" 

"Witnesses," he said. 

He hesitated, weighed the risks, then continued. "People? Real people?"

"Yes."

"How many?" 

Breathing, quick, nervous. Then a sigh. "Three." 

"You don't want to hurt them, do you, Henry?" he kept his voice level.

"I just want them to see." 

"See what?" 

"They're coming. They said they were coming." Another nervous gasp. "No one believes me. About what happens when they take me. I want someone to see."

There was something alluring in that, an irresistible pull. Henry wanted someone to see it. Sherlock, more than anything in the world, wanted to see. 

"Let them go," Sherlock said. "And take me instead." 

"What?"

"You want someone to see. I'll wait with you, Henry. I'll cooperate."

"No," Henry said. "This is a trick. Some kind of trick."

"It's no trick," he said. 

"Who's with you?" 

"No one. It's just me." 

Rustling on the other side of the door. The slide of clothing against the wall. A muffled sob. 

"You can trust me, Henry," Sherlock tried. "Let them go. I'll come willingly." 

And the thought crystalized in his mind, just for a fleeting instant: _I'm sorry, John._

The door creaked open. Henry Knight's face appeared in the gap, pallid, sweaty. His pupils were enormous, eyes wide and dark. 

"Come in." 

"Let them go first." 

"I'm holding the trigger, you do what I say." 

Sherlock nodded his assent. Henry stepped away from the door, holding a gun up with a shaking hand.

It was a small locker room. A folding table and chairs had been set up in the center, clearly a place where staff retreated for short breaks on their shifts. 

There were three people standing against the wall, two men in scrubs, a dark-haired woman in business dress with a white coat pulled over her shoulders. 

Dr. Mortimer, he assumed. 

The other two hostages looked terrified. She did not. Instead, she was staring hard at Sherlock, as if trying to tell him something with her eyes. 

He cocked his head, tried to read whatever it was that she wanted him to know. He could see she had a cat, that she'd been running late in the morning and had dressed hastily, that she had recently changed her shampoo and was regretting the decision, that she'd had a croissant for breakfast. But he did not know what, precisely, it was that she wanted him to know about Henry Knight.

"Go," Henry said. "Before I change my mind." 

And they ran, all three of them, their footsteps thudding down the hallway. 

Sherlock pushed the door shut behind him, leaned against it. 

"Drop your gun," Henry said. He prodded at Sherlock with the gun in his own hand.

Sherlock obligingly removed his gun from its holster, placed it on the ground. 

Henry squinted at him, then bent to look at the little camera lens attached to his flak jacket. "You're watching me? Is everyone watching me?"

"We don't want anyone to get hurt," he said. 

Henry hesitated, and then seemed to accept this. "Enjoy the show."

"You think that—they—are coming now?" Sherlock asked. 

"They'll tell me," Henry said. He sat down at the table, still holding the gun. There was a makeshift vest of explosives propped up against the wall, all wires and blinking lights. 

Sherlock stared at it for a long moment. Then he looked back at Henry. "Why are you doing this?"

"I told you. I want them to see." 

"There's more to it than that." 

Henry wiped at his face, his fingers sliding in a sheen of sweat. "It's a long story." 

Sherlock gestured around, shrugged. "We have time." 

*

The phone was shockingly loud in the heavy, hypnotic silence that had fallen. 

"Agent Watson, it's Molly Hooper." 

He sat up straight, rubbed at his eyes. He'd gone bleary, blurry, had lost all concept of time and place. 

"Did you get a result on that sample?" 

"Yes," she said. She sounded breathless, rushed. "It's the same. The same as the blood sample from Ian Monkford."

"Branched DNA," he said. He shut his eyes.

"Yes. It's—what does it mean?" 

"I don't know," he said. "Nothing good." 

"Agent Watson?" 

"Hm?"

"Erm—you know Agent Holmes's new partner?"

He sat up straight in his chair. "What about him?"

"Oh," she said. "No, nothing, I just—weird, yeah? Him working with someone new? I'd gotten used to—well. Not that it really matters, what I'd got used to, but—"

And there, just like that, that hot rush of miserable unhappy jealousy, hot and thick in his veins. Stupid, illogical. But there was something about Brook, with his tailored suit, his smarmy smile, the weirdly possessive way he behaved around Sherlock. 

_Who's behaving possessively now?_ he asked himself, irritated. 

He was tired. Sleep-deprived, stressed, more than a little off-kilter from months of radio silence followed by one heated embrace in a deserted family fun park. That moment in and of itself had taken on a surreal, dreamlike quality, existing somewhere on the periphery of reality. 

His very thoughts felt bruised, muddled, a perfect stew of bubbling insecurity and jealousy and anger. 

"He called about the sample, too," Hooper said. "Just—erm. A few minutes ago, actually."

"Right," John said, tired, so tired. So Brook would have already shared the results with Sherlock. No need for him to call, then. No need for him to stick around at all. The autopsies had been completed, his notes carefully documented. Test results in, every _i_ dotted and every _t_ crossed. He should go home, get some much needed sleep. Leave Sherlock and Brook to their investigation.

There was something he was missing. Something—something to do with the branched DNA.

The kids in Bellefleur, they'd been targeted. They'd died because of it.

And Sherlock had—Sherlock had had some kind of unexpected reaction to the contents of a capsule that should have been harmless. 

"Molly," he said, the blood draining out of his face, his skin gone cold and prickling. Realization crashing down around him. 

He heard her breathe in sharply, clearly startled by his use of her first name. "What is it? What's wrong?" 

"Agent Holmes. Um. I need—" how to ask this, how even to approach this, without seeming crazy? It _was_ crazy. It was crazy, and invasive, and certainly not something he should even be considering, let alone doing. 

Christ, there was nothing for it. She was used to crazy from them, after all. And it's not like Sherlock had never done anything illogical or invasive. 

"I need you to run the same test on Agent Holmes." 

"What?"

"Please," he said. "I realize this isn't an ordinary request. But if you—he might be in danger. There's a chance that he might—" 

"What do you need?" her voice had gone steel, firm.

"I—"

"I'm assuming you don't have a blood sample on hand," she said, and she gave a short little laugh. He echoed it, because she was right, this was _crazy_ , but—

"No," he said.

"Hair," she said. "I can find hair." 

"But—"

"I know where his desk is. In the bullpen. He never cuts his hair, he's always—" she paused, gave another uncomfortable little laugh. "Ruffling it. I'm sure I can find something." 

"Right," John said. "Um. This is a strange thing to ask, but—"

"I'm not going to tell anyone," she said. "I won't. I'll put it in under a different name. It's—you said he's in danger?"

"He might be," he said, and the more he thought on it, the more certain he became.

"Right," she said. "I'll do it." 

And she hung up without saying goodbye. 

He shut his eyes, groaned. Dialed again. 

"Hello Agent Watson." Brook, smooth, a smile in his voice.

He pulled the phone back from his ear, stared at it. He'd dialed Sherlock. 

"Agent Brook, I need to speak with Agent Holmes." 

"He's unavailable at the moment."

Brook sounded amused. He sounded positively _delighted._

"It's important." 

"He's gone and offered himself up as a replacement hostage," Brook said. "You know, when they told Freak stories in the academy, it almost didn't seem real. You can never really believe the stories, can you? But he's even wilder in real life. He genuinely doesn't care at all. It's fascinating." 

"What do you mean, a _replacement hostage._ "

"Henry Knight's commandeered an entire wing of the hospital," Brook said, almost conversational. "Took his therapist and a few nurses hostage. Sherlock went in, convinced him to let them go in exchange for him. Now they're waiting around for the aliens to show up." 

"Jesus." 

"Not quite," Brook said. "Henry Knight might be taking his orders from above, but it's definitely not coming from the angels." 

"You didn't try to stop him from doing this?"

"Why would I? It's a good plan." 

"No it's not, it's—" John stopped himself, took a deep breath. He only suspected that Sherlock might share a similar DNA profile with Knight's victims. He wasn't certain of anything. And there was no way that Brook, obnoxious as he was, could have any idea. 

Sherlock might have just walked straight into a trap designed just for him. 

Christ, he should have been there. He was meant to be watching Sherlock's back, to yank him back from asinine decisions like this. For a man possessing such a large brain, he so frequently didn't _think._

"Just—keep me informed," John said, and hung up. He blew out a frustrated breath, shut his eyes. 

He felt dizzy, sick with it, the utter certainty that Sherlock had just walked willingly to his own death. He thought of the sad remains he'd autopsied, those tattered torn up bits of what had once been people. Real, living people, with thoughts and feelings and hopes and dreams. 

He'd seen it in Afghanistan, and he'd seen it laid out for examination on cold surgical steel tables. But the thought of Sherlock—the thought of that happening to Sherlock—

Sherlock, who had giggled with him in the dark, who had curled close and let John put his arms around him under a night sky, who had obliged him his silly drunken request and had swung the bat and had given every sign that he enjoyed the experience. Sherlock, who had dipped his head and kissed him, so sudden that he seemed startled at his own actions, whose lips had been soft against John's, almost sweetly chaste and gentle. Sherlock, who had stood under the moonlight in the chill night air, his breaths puffing warm against John's lips, his hands cradling John's face with a surprising tenderness. 

The idea that he—that someone could endeavor to tear him from the world—it was numbing, horrifying, sickening. The very air seemed to hum with the wrongness of it. The wrong person was by Sherlock's side, and he wasn't doing his part to keep Sherlock safe. 

He stood up, grabbed for his coat and keys. 

He might not be able to help. But he needed to be there.

*

"Henry," Sherlock said. "When we last spoke, you believed that your father had been… taken."

"Yes," Henry said, shutting his eyes. He did not loosen his grip on the gun. 

"Ian Monkford and Connie Prince believed that they had been taken, too," Sherlock said. "Did you know that?" 

"They weren't people," Henry said. 

"What makes you say that?" 

"Maybe they were people before," he bit his lip. "Before they were taken. But they _changed._ "

"Changed how?" 

"We're at war." 

So you've said."

"They are among us. Just waiting. Watching." 

"Henry—" 

"Hounds in the corn." 

"You've said that before," Sherlock said, narrowing his eyes. "What does that mean? Hounds in the corn?" 

"I—" 

"Where did you get that phrase from?" 

"I—they—"

"Who are 'they', Henry? Are you talking about men? Or—"

"Sometimes it's men," he said, and his voice slipped out almost as a sob. His face was still shiny and dripping with sweat, lips pale. His hands trembled. "Sometimes it isn't. I don't know. I can't—I can't really tell what's real—" 

"Henry, is there any chance that you may have been drugged?" Sherlock held up a placating hand. "I need you to think, now. Think back over the last few days. What have you done? Who have you seen?" 

Henry scrunched up his face as he thought, then opened his eyes, blinking. "Dr. Mortimer. I saw Dr. Mortimer." 

"And does seeing Dr. Mortimer help you?" 

"Y-yes. No. Sometimes." 

"Did she give you anything?"

Henry took a deep gulping breath. Swiped his hand across his face again. "Yes, she—" he blinked, and this time there was a certain level of awareness in his eyes. He stared at Sherlock, horror creeping into his expression. "Oh, God, what has she done to me?" 

"Henry, I can help you. But I'm going to need you to come with me. We need to draw a sample of your blood—" 

"NO!" Henry jolted to his feet, holding the gun out. "No one is doing any more tests!"

Sherlock moved slowly, hands up. "Let me help you. We need to know if she's given you something. You know me, Henry, we've spoken before. You know that I believe you." 

Henry's chest rose and fell with each heaving breath. After a moment, he nodded. Just a short, sharp jerk of his head. "I remember you." He blinked again, rapid. "Just a blood test?" 

"Just a blood test. I think you've been exposed to—to a kind of experimental drug. I've seen this before." 

Henry wavered, then nodded again, sat back down. He did not let go of the gun, but his grip did not seem quite as determined. 

"I didn't kill any actual people," Henry said, and his voice was very sad, very young. 

"Just let me help you." 

"All right." 

Something beeped. 

Sherlock jolted, shooting a nervous glance at the explosives that still blinked in the corner. He looked back at Henry, who had taken a phone out of his pocket. 

"Henry," he said. "Who is that on the phone?"

Henry was staring at the screen, his eyes wide. He looked up, blinked. "I—" 

"Henry. Give me the phone. Who are you talking to?" 

"You're one of them," Henry said. "Aren't you?" 

"What—no—what are you talking about?" Agitated now, Sherlock held out his hand for the phone. "Who is that?" 

Henry snatched the phone back, drew the gun up again, aimed it between Sherlock's eyes. "You're trying to trick me." 

"Henry, think about what you're doing—" Sherlock tried, panic seeping in. He hadn't foreseen this. For a moment, one terrible moment, his head was full of John. John, laughing with him under the stars. John, looking at him as if he were something miraculous. 

The crash of gunfire was deafening. 

*

John's phone was ringing as he pulled up near the hospital. He got out of his car, took in the chaotic scene. Christ, this was bad. 

"Agent Watson," Molly said in his ear. "John, it's—look. I did a rush test. It's the same. The branched DNA, whatever that means—Agent Holmes has it too. I—" 

"Not now," John said, and hung up, breaking into a run. His heart was pounding, his skin cold. 

_Too late,_ his mind chanted. _Too late, too late, too late._

Something was happening. There were officers shouting into walkie talkies, rushing for the entrance. John held out his badge, rushing forward. 

"Shots fired," someone said. 

He whirled around, focused his attention on the nearest officer. "Agent Holmes. The FBI agent who went inside. Where is he? Is he all right?" 

The man shook his head, wordless, and John turned away. He fought his way forward again, scanning the faces for Brook, for Sherlock, for anyone at all familiar. 

"All clear," a voice crackled out of the radio the officer to John's left was holding. "Suspect down." 

"Agent Holmes!" he shouted, looking around. "Does anyone know where I can find Agent Holmes?"

One of the officers in the little makeshift command center poked his head up. "You're looking for Agent Holmes?" 

"Is he all right?" John demanded.

"He's inside—"

"Is he _all right?_ "

"John?" 

John's head snapped up. Sherlock was—Sherlock was standing at the entrance, his face pale under the fluorescent hospital lights. There was a splash of blood on his shirt. 

"Sherlock, what—" 

He took an aborted step forward, caught himself. Took a steadying breath. Sherlock was all right. He looked exhausted, but he was all right. The blood wasn't his. He wasn't bleeding. He—

"The SWAT team moved in on Knight when he became agitated," Sherlock said. He moved closer, standing very close to John, speaking low. "He's down, but he's still alive." 

"What happened?" 

Sherlock made a frustrated sound. "Someone was sending him messages. I'm sure of it." 

"Who?"

"I don't know. His phone was destroyed in the scuffle." There was a disgusted haughtiness to his tone as he spoke. "Someone _shot_ it."

"You're all right?"

"Fine," Sherlock said, distracted. "There's an explosives team in there now. He had one of his vests with him. They seem to feel it won't take long to diffuse." 

"Christ," John said. "Who was the target? His therapist?" 

"No," Sherlock said. "We've taken her into custody. I believe she was drugging him. I've asked for him to be screened, but, John, this looks an awful lot like H.O.U.N.D." 

John pursed his lips, looked back at the hospital. 

"We've seen this before," Sherlock said. "The erratic behavior. If someone was feeding him messages, directing the delusion—" 

"You think someone was, what, aiming him?" 

"I think it's likely," Sherlock said. He breathed out, looked down at the ground. When he looked back up, his expression had sharpened. "You're here. Why are you—why did you come here?" 

"I was worried," John said. "And, Sherlock, I—tried to call and tell you earlier, but—this sounds terrible. I had Agent Hooper run another DNA test." 

"On Connie Prince?"

"On you." 

Sherlock blinked. "Me?" 

"The tests on both Ian Monkford and Connie Prince revealed branched DNA. I thought—well. That they were being targeted based on that, like the kids in Bellefleur." 

Sherlock nodded, opened his mouth to speak. 

"Just—" John held up his hand. "I got to thinking about Bellefleur. And the way you—the reaction you had. When you picked up that pill." 

Sherlock took a step back, shaking his head. "John—" 

"Listen to me, please," John said, stepping forward, grasping his forearms. "It occurred to me that we might have overlooked it. That you might have fit the profile of Knight's victims. That this whole thing might have been some kind of trap." 

"You found something," Sherlock said. His voice had gone flat. 

"She used a hair. If you—we can have her run another test. With a blood sample. But—" 

"What did you find?"

"Branched DNA," John said, blowing out a nervous breath of air. He let Sherlock's arms go, looked down at the ground. "Same as the kids in Bellefleur. Same as Ian Monkford and Connie Prince." 

"John," Sherlock said, and his eyes had lit up with a bright, horrified interest. "Knight received a text while I was with him. Something that made him believe I was—how did he put it. Not really a person." 

"And we have no way of knowing who texted him." 

"No," Sherlock said. He pressed his hand to his mouth, his eyes gone distant. After a moment, he looked back at John, blinked at him with an expression that was oddly tender. "I—I have to go, John. I need to question Dr. Mortimer, and I want to speak with Knight if he wakes up. Brook is with him now, but—" 

"Yeah," John said. He nodded. Reached out again, clasped his hand around Sherlock's shoulder, squeezed once. Reassured by the warm solid life of him. "All right. I—I'm sorry for—" 

"Don't apologize for following up a lead, John," Sherlock said. He cleared his throat. "And. Thank you. For your—um. Concern." 

"I'm glad you're all right," John said. 

"We'll talk later," Sherlock said. "All right?" 

John nodded, finding it difficult to look away. "All right. Later." He cleared his throat. "If—if you need me. Don't hesitate. All right?" 

A little quirk of a smile, a nod. Then Sherlock disappeared back into the hospital.

John watched him go, stood in the parking lot for a long moment after he had vanished out of sight. 

*

Sherlock considered stopping at a vending machine for a cup of coffee, dismissed the idea. Took the elevator back towards the Critical Care Unit, where Henry Knight was being treated. 

Upon news that the explosive device had been safely removed, slow progress was being made at repopulating the hospital. The wing was a flurry of activity, scrambling nurses, rushing aides, the shrill siren call of monitors. 

He rounded the corner, stopped dead. 

Brook was lying on his back on the floor. Unmoving.

Sherlock dropped into a crouch, felt for a pulse. His heartbeat was steady, even. 

His nose had been broken. There was blood sprayed on his face, splashed on the floor, droplets staining his white dress shirt. The thin skin under his eyes had already begun to darken. 

Knight's bed was empty, his cuffs dangling from the railing. 

Brook groaned, opened one eye. "What happened?"

Sherlock gaped at him for a moment, then lurched to his feet, already shouting the alarm.

*

John pushed through the door to his apartment, let it slam behind him. He threw his coat aside, dropped his gun in its holster onto the coffee table, sat down on the sofa. Shut his eyes. 

Christ, he was exhausted. 

Sleep pulled at him, and he forced himself to stand up. He needed to eat something. He needed to shower. And he needed to fall asleep somewhere that was not the couch. 

He looked down at his phone. 

Sherlock was likely to be tied up at the crime scene for hours. And then, when he was done—

Well. That remained to be seen. 

It was a certain irrational fondness that made him dial Sherlock's number. He'd leave him a message. Let him know that he could stop by, after. If he wanted.

He was tired and fond and entirely, stupidly relieved, and yet—

There was something—

His skin itched. He was wired, his muscles jumpy. He wanted to pace, wanted to move, felt oddly confined in the small space of his apartment in spite of his exhaustion. 

The longer he stood still, the more utterly convinced he became. Something was wrong. Something was _wrong._

He connected the call, listened as it rang, rang again. Sherlock's rich voice bloomed in his ear, just the brief drone of his voicemail message. 

"Sherlock," John said. "Call me when you get this. I think—" 

He paused, all of his jumpiness and feelings of wrongness coalescing as he regarded the closed door to his bedroom. 

He'd left it open in the morning.

He cleared his throat, aware, now, of the warmth from his phone, pressing against his cheek. Of the creak of his own footsteps on the floor, the possibility that someone else was lying in wait, breathing quiet breaths on the other side of the thin wood door. 

His gun, out of reach on the coffee table in the other room. 

"I think—" he said again, his mouth dry, conscious now that someone might be listening. He looked back towards the living room, towards his gun.

A creak, behind the door, a shift of weight on the floorboards. 

"Sherlock, there's someone here." He stepped backwards, now, one step, two, creeping back in the direction of his weapon. "I need you to—" 

His bedroom door crashed open, Henry Knight barreling out with his eyes wide, his face flushed red. John reached the coffee table and grabbed for his gun, just as something flat and hard cracked him in the back of the head. 

He went down to his knees, the phone skittering across the floor. He curled his hand around the gun, turned, already tightening his grip, settling his finger on the trigger. 

Knight hit him with a lamp, knocking his hands out of the way. He pulled the trigger reflexively, and the bullet buried itself harmlessly in the wall. Knight stamped down on his hand, kicking the gun away. 

He rolled to the side, stumbling to his feet in a crouched position, center of gravity low. He'd been trained in unarmed combat. Knight had not. If he could just--

"Don't try it," Knight said. He was gasping. His pupils were huge. 

"Henry," John said. There was a trickle of blood running down his face from his hairline, an irritating, tickling sensation. "You're not yourself right now. You don't want to do this." 

"You don't know what I want." 

He could guess, and the likely answer included a bomb vest and John's innards splashed across the surface of Henry Knight's choosing. It was not, exactly, in his best interests to pursue that line of discussion. 

"You've been given something," he said instead. "A drug. It's making you—see things. Feel things. That aren't real." 

"Not real," Knight gasped. 

"Yes," John said, a flare of hope blooming. He edged sideways, slowly, towards his gun. 

"There are people—so many people—who look real, but they aren't," Knight said. He was sweating. He shook his head, rapidly, like a dog. "Hounds loose amongst the chickens." 

"Henry—" 

"I'm sorry to do this," Knight said, and he didn't sound very sorry at all. "Because you're real. You are. But they told me it had to be you." 

John held up his hands, placating. 

Knight fumbled with his jacket, unzipping it, revealing the nest of wires underneath and—oh _Christ_ , he was wired to blow. 

"Don't make me do it," Knight said. "I don't want to blow you up. But I will. If I have to." 

"You'll go up too," John said. 

Knight blinked at him, his eyes too wide, owlish. He stared hard at John. Then he began shrugging out of his coat, out of the vest of explosives that had been draped around his torso. "You're going to put this on. If you try anything, I'll push the button." 

"Henry, don't—" 

"PUT IT ON!" 

John nodded, held out his hands again. Knight's face had gone glassy with sweat and fear. He wondered, briefly, at the long-term effects of prolonged H.O.U.N.D. exposure. 

It was hard not to think of Sherlock, under the influence of the same substance, locked alone in a room in some government lab. Had he screamed? Begged for mercy? What had he seen?

John kept his movements slow, deliberate, as he slipped the heavy weight of the vest over his shoulders. Knight stepped forward, tugged it roughly into place. 

"Now," Knight said, reaching into his own pocket, drawing out his phone. He looked down at the screen, his sallow skin briefly illuminated as he read out loud. "You're going to do exactly as I say." 

*

Sherlock's phone buzzed as he was sitting down in a chair across from Dr. Mortimer. He glanced down, saw John's name lit up on the screen, swallowed. Let it ring. Looked back up. 

"I haven't seen Henry Knight in years," she said. There was a strained sort of insistence to her voice.

"Your phone records would say otherwise," he said, raised his brows. "What about the fact that he remains convinced that you've been supplying him with drugs?" 

She shook her head, lips pursed tightly. "Agent Holmes, I hope you understand that I have no intention of speaking to you any further without a lawyer present." 

"Do you have any idea where he could be going?" he tried. "He's hurting people, Dr. Mortimer. He's not well." 

She looked calmly back at him. Did not speak.

He rolled his eyes, stood up. In his pocket, his phone fell silent. 

Brook was being examined in a room down the hall. Knight had seemed unconscious, he'd said. He had no idea how he'd managed to pick the lock on his cuffs. Brook had been looking down at his phone when Knight had abruptly sat up, swung a monitor screen right into his face. 

"I don't know how long I was out before you found me," Brook had said, groggy, his voice mushy. He'd spat blood on the floor. One of the nurses had ushered him off to tend to him. 

Henry Knight had, somehow, managed to disappear from a hospital swarming with police. He'd done it while high on a hallucinogenic substance, bleeding from a gunshot wound in his shoulder. 

Something wasn't adding up.

He went out into the hallway, already looking down at his phone. John had left a voicemail. 

He swallowed again, thinking of the look on John's face when he'd come out of the hospital. The way his gaze had caught, the way his face had contorted into relief and—something else. The nod. The small smile. The aborted stumble-step he'd taken, the one that spoke of _intent._

Had they been alone, Sherlock was certain that John would have embraced him. 

"We'll talk later," Sherlock had promised him. 

He looked at the time. It was late, certainly. After midnight. There was a mad bomber on the loose.

He thought about walking away, of striding right through the hospital exit into the chill night air, of getting behind the wheel of his car and driving to John's apartment. Of knocking on the door. Letting John pull him into his arms, soothe his tired bones. 

John would, he realized, with a strange warm buzzing in his chest. He _would._ And not out of obligation or duty. He'd be _happy_ to see him. 

That was—

He shut his eyes for a moment, letting the thoughts flow over him. 

It was a nice thought. But. There was a mad bomber on the loose. He needed to see this through before turning his attentions elsewhere. John would have to wait.

Because he was fairly sure that John merited his full attention. 

He could call, though. Like he'd promised. And then, when Knight had been taken into custody, he could—

He pushed through the door to the exam room, dialing in to his mailbox as he walked. 

Brook was sitting on the exam table, frowning down at his phone. His face had been cleaned up, a steri-strip across the split skin on his nose, bruised skin purpling under his eyes. He looked up as Sherlock entered, slipping his phone into his pocket. 

"Anything?" he asked. He still looked groggy, half-stunned. 

Sherlock shook his head, phone pressed against his ear. He held up one hand to silence him as John's voice, tinny, stressed, emerged from the speaker. 

John was agitated, distracted and—

Sounds of a struggle. Distress. Shouting. Breaking glass. 

His ears began to roar, his knees wobbled, actually _wobbled_ for a moment. 

_John,_ he thought, frantic. _Not again. Not John._

"What's wrong?" Brook asked, hopping down from the table, grabbing for his coat. 

Sherlock ignored him. Phone still pressed to his ear, he bolted for the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to stop by and say hi on [Tumblr](http://www.discordantwords.tumblr.com/)!


	9. Heartburn

*

The first time had Sherlock stepped onto a crime scene, he had fallen in love. 

His mind, frequently racing in several different directions at once, pulling itself to pieces, had suddenly clicked into gear, flooding his senses with data. _Focused_ data; smell and sound, puzzle pieces snapping together in perfect alignment. 

He'd looked down at a blood-soaked rug, inhaled the heavy iron scent in the air, studied the spray of rust-colored droplets drying on the walls. Cast his gaze over a sad, crumpled form on the ground. He'd looked, and he'd known how and why and when and who. 

He couldn't have stopped if he'd wanted to. It had been better than cocaine. He had been higher than he'd ever been in his life, flying with it, his blood singing with the sudden rightness of being able to look, to _see._

His academy classmates had been in awe, slack-jawed and gaping. His instructors, speechless. And he'd kept doing it, kept on walking into houses and shipping containers and lonely isolated little plots of land and pulling details out of thin air with a wave of his hand. Connecting dots, solving problems the way that no one had ever been able to do for him. 

He had been luminous. Unstoppable. He'd horrified his peers with his enthusiasm, with his sheer voracity for crime and gore and murder and mayhem. He'd approached crime scenes with a bounce in his step, a smile on his face, because he was good at it. And he liked to be good at things, he liked to be the _best_ at things. The more complex and vexing the crime, the better. 

Walking into John's crime scene was—

It was not like that.

The police had arrived first. The exterior of John's building was awash in flashing lights, blue and red. There were officers milling around, doing nothing at all, and that was—that meant—

His gaze caught on an ambulance, idling, lights off, and his blood went cold. 

Dead, he thought. Dead. He's dead and you did _nothing_ to stop it. 

He sat for a moment, just blinking. He shivered. The lights were very bright. Too bright. Dizzying, almost.

He was going to need to get out of the car. He was going to need to—he was going to—

He couldn't move. 

He had been an utterly repellent little boy, once. Useless. Cringing, pathetic, tear-streaked and frozen on his front steps. Paramedics had wrapped him in a blanket. They had spoken to him, meaningless platitudes, soothing words. Police had asked him questions, important questions, questions that needed answers. Answers that could have helped. He'd done _nothing._

He'd provided no answers, no assistance. He'd been slow and stupid and shocked, and he'd let something terrible happen. 

He got out of the car, pulled his coat close. He shivered again, grit his teeth. Drifted towards the entrance to John's building, the lights flashing all around lending the air a hazy, disorienting feel. 

He took his badge out, held it up when questioned. He moved past the officers, droning voices not quite coalescing into actual words. He was very conscious of his own heartbeat, of the sounds of his own indrawn breaths, the cold clammy feeling of his own skin. 

He went down the hall and into John's apartment. Shut his eyes against the flash of an evidence camera. 

Someone said something to him. He ignored them, brushed by into the living room. Looked down at the broken glass, the smashed coffee table. John's gun, on the floor in the corner. His eyes tracked up along the wall automatically, found the bullet hole. 

John had tried to shoot his attacker. The gun had been smacked out of his hands before he could do so. He'd fired reflexively. 

Sherlock shut his eyes. He could not help but see it, the evidence written in every scuff, every gouge, every drop of blood and displaced item in the room. 

John, at the hospital, looking at Sherlock with that face, that expression that had been so difficult to parse. They'd lingered, there, breaths puffing in the cold air, oddly reluctant to step apart. 

For a moment, Sherlock let it play out in his mind, let his imagination unspool a perfectly tailored torment:

Henry Knight and Louise Mortimer in custody, scene dealt with, preliminary paperwork filed, Lestrade briefed. He'd be tired, absurdly so, dead on his feet. He'd have driven to John's. There were always people in and out of the building at odd hours, so he'd have grabbed the door as it swung shut behind someone, walked down the hall to John's door. He'd have tapped on the door—and he wasn't quite sure if he'd simply go for a perfunctory knock or, if perhaps a fit of whimsy would come upon him and lead him to rap his knuckles across the wood in a playful rhythm. 

Regardless. 

John would have opened the door. He'd have eaten, showered, possibly fallen asleep. He'd be tired, rumpled, his skin stubbled, his hair mussed. 

"I'm sorry for waking you," Sherlock would have said, meaning no such thing. 

"No you're not," John would have said. And he'd step aside, wordlessly invite Sherlock in. 

He tried to think of how it might unfold past that—would John make him a cup of tea? Pour him a drink or offer him something to eat? Would they sit down on the sofa and… chat? 

_We'll talk later,_ he'd said, outside the hospital. 

John had nodded, had stared at him like he was the only thing in the world worth looking at. 

That face would—he thought it was quite possible that face might haunt him for the rest of his life. 

He thought again of knocking on John's door, of standing in the hall, tired and swaying as John opened. Rumpled, stubbled, mussed. Smiling. He thought of saying "I'm sorry for waking you" and John saying "No you're not" and of tipping forward, catching John's lips in a kiss as John moved aside to let him in. The angle would have been awkward. John would have been surprised. He'd have breathed out a startled puff of breath, and Sherlock would have breathed it in. Their legs would have tangled up. He'd have had to grab onto the doorframe to avoid bringing them both down to the ground. 

He opened his eyes. 

Broken glass. The coffee table, snapped down the middle, legs cracked. Hole in the wall. Gun on the floor. A lamp, base chipped and dented, shade torn. 

The violence had terminated in this room. No one had gotten to their feet, fled for the hall. There were no gruesome surprises waiting for them in the bedroom, the bathroom, the hall closet, the kitchen. 

And, most importantly, there was no body on the ground. No outline. 

John _wasn't here._

He'd missed it, he'd been so far down in his own head that he'd noted the details but not the most blindingly obvious fact. John wasn't dead. He wasn't dead. He—

"Well this is a bit of a mess, isn't it?" 

Brook's voice, behind him, curling up in a question. He sounded almost—amused. But then again, he always seemed to sound amused, the affectation oddly ill-fitting, like he was trying humor on for size. 

Sherlock turned to face him. He was leaning in the doorway, arms crossed. 

Whatever showed on Sherlock's face made his eyes widen, briefly, a flicker of something on his face. He raised his brows. 

"He's not here," Sherlock said. A clear sign his mind wasn't running at optimal performance. He couldn't imagine making a more obvious statement. 

"No," Brook agreed. "But, then again, Henry Knight seems to like taking them somewhere a little less populated before doing the deed. Fewer casualties, I suppose." 

The thought of John reduced to a red smear in a cornfield had Sherlock turning towards Brook with a snarl on his lips before the words caught up with him. "Fewer casualties—exactly. Real people. Henry Knight doesn't want to hurt _real people._ " 

Brook raised his brows.

"This all ties back to Moriarty somehow." 

Brook cleared his throat, bounced a bit on the balls of his feet, all nervous energy. His face was keenly interested, eyes bright. "The pharmaceutical company? How?" 

Sherlock turned away, turned away from all of it, forced himself not to look at the blood and the broken glass and the evidence that something had _happened to John_ and instead looked inward. When he spoke, his words were rapidfire, his hand waving and twitching as he sorted through information in his mind. 

"I've been on the fringes of this for some time. Not quite able to put it together. There was a case—abductees in Oregon. They'd had something done to them. Their DNA was… altered. They were being targeted, killed. Someone was cleaning up their mess." 

"Go on," Brook said. 

It barely registered. Sherlock spun away from the wall, ignored the irritated protest from one of the officers bagging evidence. 

"They're clever, of course, they're covering their tracks. There's still cleanup work to be done, but they can't fall back on old methods, not when it would bring attention back to them." He looked up, blinked. "They've been doing work, contracted with our government, on experimental hallucinogenic drugs. Did you know that?" 

"Our government always has and always will engage in some level of bioweapon research—" 

"It's more than that. This particular drug can—it heightens fear, paranoia, and it renders the subject extremely suggestible." He exhaled, breathless with realization. "They are using Henry Knight to clean up their mess. Playing on his fears. Telling him that their targets—that they aren't real people. That they're something _else_. He's afraid, and he's not acting alone. He's being guided." 

"Guided where?" 

"I don't know," he said, and the words hurt to speak. He blinked, looked around again.

John's apartment, crowded, disturbed. There were no further answers to be found here.

 

*

The sky had begun to brighten, faint light trickling through the windows in Lestrade's office. 

Lestrade himself was slouched behind his desk, rumpled in yesterday's suit. There was a half-drunk mug of coffee in front of him, long gone cold. 

Sherlock paced like a caged animal. 

His vision had gone hazy at the edges. Lestrade, with his sympathy and his patient questions, was utterly intolerable at the moment. Brook, who stood eagerly at attention at his side, was no better. 

The smell of smoke hung in the air. Lingering, persistent, oppressive. 

"Agent Holmes," Lestrade said, finally, rubbing the palms of his hand over his face, skin rasping audibly over the stubble there. He sat back, working his jaw. "This is your area. What is Knight thinking? What is he going to do?" 

Sherlock startled a little at the sound of his voice, blinked, struggled to keep himself online. "He wants a witness." 

"A witness to what?" 

"Um," Sherlock said, and felt a fresh hot wave of anger at himself. His lip curled up. John was missing, and here he was, _useless._

He shook his head, sharply, aware on some level that his behavior, his reactions, were likely worrying to the outside observer. "He's a multiple abductee. He believes he's going to be taken again. He told me as much, back at the hospital." 

"Why Agent Watson?" Lestrade asked. 

And that was the question, wasn't it? Because Henry Knight had never met John. Had never clapped eyes on him. 

He'd had no reason to go after John Watson. 

None. 

Not unless someone had told him to do so. 

"Because, as usual, more is going on than you can see," Sherlock said, and the exhaustion in his voice was not an affectation this time. 

"If I may interject—" Brook's voice was low, contrite, still nasal from the blow to his face. The split skin on the bridge of his nose and the dark bruises that had bloomed under his eyes were startling in the weak light. "I feel personally responsible. I let my guard down, with Knight. If I'd stopped him, this wouldn't be happening right now." 

Sherlock glanced sharply at him, opened his mouth to speak. 

Lestrade cut him off. "Now isn't the time for guilt or blame, Agent Brook." He looked back at Sherlock, his face softening slightly into something that resembled—regret? Pity? "Holmes, I'm going to ask you to turn over all of your files, anything you have on Knight. I don't think I need to impress upon either of you the seriousness of this situation. We have to assume we're working within a limited window of time. The sooner the task force can integrate your information with what they know, the better." 

Sherlock nodded. "I'll brief them." 

Lestrade shook his head. "No. You're going home. Get some sleep." 

"What?" His jaw dropped. "Absolutely not." 

Lestrade stood up, his shoulders squared. "You're exhausted, and, frankly, you're too close to this case. If we can use you, we will. Now go." 

And for another hateful _hateful_ moment, he was that boy on the stairs, the one with the wide eyes and frozen tongue, the one who could do nothing but gape. 

"I will not," he said, shutting his eyes against the barrage of memories. If ever there were an inconvenient time to be assaulted with _feelings—_

"That's an order, Agent Holmes," Lestrade said. His voice brokered no argument. 

"You said yourself we're working within a limited window of time. He doesn't hold them for very long before he blows them up."

"And we are going to do everything in our power to prevent that," Lestrade said. His voice softened somewhat, but the line of his shoulders, the clench of his jaw remained firm, unyielding. "You're no help to anyone in this state. And I can't have my team worried about babysitting you." 

He flushed up with humiliated horror, opened his mouth to eviscerate Lestrade in the way that only he knew how. Deductions about the state of his marriage, his wife's obvious infidelity, the disappointment at not reaching a higher level than Assistant Director at this stage in his career—

"Don't make me order you again," Lestrade said, not flinching under the onslaught. His eyes flicked to Brook. "Make sure he gets home safely." He sat back down behind his desk, looked down at the papers in front of him. "Dismissed." 

*

Brook drove him home.

Sherlock considered giving him the slip, but he seemed to have cottoned on to that approach and proved rather unshakable. 

At least he didn't _speak_ , which was a profound relief. 

Sherlock needed to think. 

"You're not going to run off, are you?" Brook asked when they'd pulled up in front of Sherlock's building. He had sounded almost teasing, goading. They were the first words he'd spoken since leaving FBI headquarters. 

Sherlock had shaken his head, gotten out of the car, went inside without another word. He slammed his door behind him, paced back and forth, from window to hall and back again, hands in his hair, eyes closed. 

There was something he was missing. This tied back to Moriarty, to everything they'd already seen and uncovered. 

His mind flitted uncomfortably to Baskerville. To Dr. Yao, passing him at the gate. (Because of John. Because John had _cared_ , he had cared and he had worried and he had taken ridiculous measures to _get Sherlock out_ and—no—he couldn't think of that now. He needed his mind to be clear of distraction. Focused.)

Yao, at the gate. His slow walk. His memories were hazy at the edges, overbright and panicky, tainted by the drugs he'd been exposed to. But Yao had spoken to him. Yao had paused and had looked at him. The expression on his face had been grim, resigned.

_You've got his attention now,_ he'd said. _I wouldn't feel too comfortable about that._

And then John had—John had helped him into the car, hadn't he? He'd taken him away from Baskerville, and his very presence had been soothing, calming, and—

He couldn't _think._

John was gone and he couldn't think.

An entire career, an entire lifetime of successes built on remaining clearheaded in the face of things that shook other people to the core and now—

He lashed out, swiping a pile of books off of the coffee table. The sound they made as they hit the ground wasn't nearly satisfying enough, so he kicked the coffee table over for good measure. Then he thought of John's coffee table, smashed flat, surface cracked because someone had so clearly been _thrown_ into it. He stamped and kicked at his own, wood splintering under the onslaught. When his foot cramped he picked it up and threw it, one of the legs snapping loose as it hit the wall. 

He stood, chest heaving, and realized that the low, miserable sound rasping along with his own harsh breaths was coming from somewhere low in his chest.

He dropped to the floor, back against the couch. Drew his knees up under his chin. A splinter of wood had wedged under his fingernail and he carefully pulled it out, blood welling up. 

_Think,_ he commanded himself. 

He shut his eyes. 

*

John's door loomed before him. He pressed his hand flat against the wood, leaned there for a moment. It felt like he had been walking for a very long time. 

He curled his hand up into a fist to knock, then hesitated, suddenly and uncharacteristically unsure. He'd been buoyant, a moment ago. Hadn't he? He couldn't quite remember. 

He was tired. It was late—or early—he wasn't sure. Time had ceased mattering, had lost its importance somewhere around the moment that John's eyes had met his through a sea of flashing lights, his face slackening with relief.

_We'll talk later,_ he'd said. 

Was this—later? Had John taken it to mean tomorrow, or later in a broad, general sense, not necessarily later this very same night?

Should he have just gone home? John was probably asleep. It was late, after all. Or early. 

He should have just gone home.

He turned to leave, and found himself knocking instead, tapping out a playful little beat against the wood. He was smiling, he realized, appalled. Smiling. For absolutely no reason.

This was horrible, and he should leave immediately. Preferably before John woke up—

The door opened. 

John was smiling back at him, looking rumpled and sleepy but very much pleased to see him. 

It lit something warm in him, that smile. Suddenly he didn't mind his own so much. 

"I'm sorry for waking you," he said, although he certainly was not. 

"No you're not," John said, still smiling, that fond _fond_ smile that he'd used on Sherlock in the past, and oh— _oh—_ was this what he'd meant by that all along?

John stepped away from the door, wordlessly inviting Sherlock inside. He went, very conscious of his movements, of the feel of his own limbs sliding inside his clothes, the shallow rise and fall of his chest. 

"Are you all right?" John asked him. 

"Of course I'm all right," he said. 

"Good," John said, and then his hands were fisted up in the lapels of Sherlock's coat, dragging him forward and Sherlock kept his eyes open as their lips met, wanting to see everything, to memorize every line, every minute shift in John's expression, the languid slide of their lips. 

He made a sound, an embarrassingly breathy noise, and pulled back ever-so-slightly, pressed his forehead against John's. The sight of John's eyes fluttering, his lips damp and kiss-swollen was too much, and he shut his eyes, breathed deeply. He was trembling, he realized, a faint full-body shiver that seemed to start somewhere deep at his core. 

He took another steadying breath, opened his eyes. 

"I'm sorry, Sherlock," John said. 

He frowned, leaned forward and kissed John again. This didn't seem like the time or place for apologies. John's arms were warm around him, his body a pleasant weight against him. 

"Bad timing, that's all," John said, drawing back. His voice was sad. 

Sherlock shook his head, even as his eyes flitted over John's form, settled on the blinking explosive vest that he'd been wired into. 

"What—?" he said, his voice slow, stupid. His mouth had gone dry. He reached out. 

John stepped out of his reach, shaking his head. "You knew there was no way this could really work out." 

And he did, he _did_ know, he had reasons for why he preferred working alone, and those reasons were sound, but John was just—John, and he _fit_ and—

"For what it's worth," John said, and he was still smiling that fond smile of his, but his eyes had gone dark and sad. "I would have wanted it to." 

When the explosion came there was light but no sound, just a blistering flash of white, searing his eyes. Sherlock, frozen mid-step, his hand still outstretched. 

He blinked furiously as his vision cleared. 

Blood dripped from the walls. 

Someone was laughing in the distance, the sound ricocheting around the room, rattling inside of his skull. 

There was blood on the walls. John's blood. He—

 

He did not drift back to consciousness, nor did he jolt. He was simply asleep one moment and awake the next, blinking at the wreckage he'd made of his living room. 

He had no idea what time it was. 

He moved to stand, his back and legs screaming from being cramped in such an unnatural position. His stomach was sour and queasy from his dream. 

He stretched, stumble-stepped towards the window, looked outside. 

The sun was high in the sky. Early afternoon, then. He'd been asleep for a few hours, for better or worse. 

John. 

He lunged for his phone. No messages, no missed calls. 

They hadn't found him. Nothing had—happened. Yet. 

He rubbed the palms of his hands over his face, considered. Lestrade had ordered him to go home and sleep. Technically, he had done so. 

He showered, let the hot steam loosen up his knotted back. Dressed. 

The sawing, serrated edge of his panic had receded. In its place was a worrying numbness, a dullness, the sensation that nothing he was about to do could possibly make any difference, that John's fate had been sealed from the moment that Sherlock had met his gaze in his cluttered office and accepted him into his life. 

He went down the hall into his bedroom. 

Well. Some would say bedroom. 

He hadn't slept in his own bed in years, preferring the comfortable worn leather of his couch. He was on the road more often than not, anyway, trading motel bed for motel bed, city for city. 

He'd turned his bedroom into an archive of sorts, piles of paperwork and files, esoteric bits of information, clippings from niche newspapers, remnants of particularly interesting or perplexing cases. There were boxes, cartons stacked nearly to the ceiling, blocking the weak light from the window. 

He had the pertinent details of Henry Knight's case stored in his mind. But the rest—seemingly inconsequential bits of information—that, he'd kept in hard copy. 

He found it in a dusty crate in the far corner of the room, against the back wall. He spread the papers out on his kitchen table, stared down at what he'd amassed. 

He had approached the case with the sort of enthusiasm that was typical to him upon discovering a new interest. There were several photographs of Henry Knight's assorted scars, injuries he'd claimed came from alien experimentation. If he allowed himself, he could conjure up that moment, his heart thudding with the promise of imminent discovery, bright and eager to know, to _understand_. 

Henry had been timid, and tentative, and seemingly finding it difficult to accept that someone found his story worth listening to. Sherlock remembered wondering, at the time, how many people he'd attempted to tell before he'd given up entirely. 

Now, at his kitchen table, he flipped briefly through the photographs, set them aside. He looked at the photocopied pages, medical records, a collection of aged drawings in an unsteady child's hand—Henry's early recollections of the night his father had disappeared—and finally found what he was looking for. 

His own notes, jotted down absently while Henry spoke. 

He was not, strictly speaking, one for notes. He dealt in impressions, drew his conclusions from sight and smell and sound and taste. He saw little sense in writing down what someone was saying with their mouth when their face and body was saying something entirely different. 

But in this particular case, it was the recollections he'd been after. He didn't much care what Henry thought or felt about the matter, just his own words, his memories of what had happened that night. 

And so he'd written it down. He'd written it down, and then, later, had pored over his own notations, looking for similarities, looking for something to tie Henry's experiences to his own. 

People didn't just _disappear._

Henry's father had gone somewhere. So had Sherlock's brother.

So had John. 

No—no, he needed to focus. John's predicament was strictly terrestrial in nature. 

The notes. 

Henry Knight had been thirteen years old when his father had vanished under a clear night sky. Eleven years after that, he'd found himself recounting his story to Sherlock. 

"He tried to protect me," he'd said, his eyes wide, his face slack with recollection. "The lights were so bright." 

They had gone to sleep in a tent, had woken to blinding lights and a—presence. Henry had been frozen, helpless, but his father had, apparently, been capable of resisting. To some extent.

His next memory was of waking in the woods. Alone. According to reports, he'd been missing for three days. 

There were medical records. He'd been treated for exposure, dehydration.

"The—presence—in your tent," Sherlock had asked him. "You said your father argued with it, that he tried to protect you. Did anyone respond? Did you hear anything at all?" 

"No," Henry had said. "No." 

Sherlock stared down at the papers, at his own handwriting, his utterly insufficient records. 

_Ascending to the stars,_ he'd written, gone over the lines again to darken them. An idle motion. He'd been bored.

Henry had spoken it repeatedly during their sessions, a kind of calming mantra. Sherlock had found it irritating at the time. 

Now, he wondered if there was something more to it. 

_Hounds in the corn,_ he'd told the police dispatcher. Another odd phrase. 

The first victim, Ian Monkford, had been found in a cornfield. And not just any cornfield, but one on the property of a farmhouse that had been owned by Henry Knight's grandmother. As the house had not changed hands, it was possible that some of the family possessions remained inside.

He hadn't gone into the house. He'd looked at the corn, at the damage from the explosion. 

The police had said that someone had clearly been squatting inside the house, that Monkford may have been held there before being killed. It was unlikely that Knight would return to the scene, particularly considering the area would be under police surveillance, but there might be something there. Something the police had missed. 

Something _he_ had missed. 

He grabbed his coat, went out into the hallway. 

Brook was waiting by the door, leaning against the wall, arms folded. He was smirking. 

Sherlock drew up short at the sight of him, startled, _furious_ at himself for being startled, for allowing himself to be caught unawares again. He was better than this. There were at least three obvious signs that there was someone just outside the door, and he should have seen them. 

"Going somewhere?" Brook asked him.

"Laundry day," Sherlock said, and gave him a flat smile. He locked the door behind him, went down the hall towards the elevator. 

Brook followed at an unhurried pace. 

Sherlock stabbed at the button for the elevator, turned back to face him, lip curling up. "I assume Lestrade sent you to babysit." 

Brook held his hands up in a gesture of mock surrender. "Don't shoot the messenger. He's worried that you'll do something to compromise the investigation." 

"Excluding me from the investigation is compromising it," Sherlock said. The elevator dinged open and he stepped inside, Brook on his heels. 

"I agree," Brook said, that odd little smirk playing on his lips again. 

"Oh," Sherlock said. He pressed the button for the ground floor. The elevator rocked into motion with a lurch that made his stomach drop. 

"So where are we going?" Brook asked, as the elevators opened on the lobby. He followed Sherlock outside into the crisp air.

Sherlock hesitated, weighed his options. Brook had not taken kindly to being ditched the last time, and he wasn't stupid. He'd likely run straight to Lestrade if Sherlock left him behind now. 

No—best to have his cooperation. And it might prove helpful. To have someone to bounce ideas off of. Maybe.

"Back to the first scene," he said. "Where they found Ian Monkford." 

"The cornfield?" Brook wrinkled his nose up. "Why there?" 

_Because I don't know where to start looking,_ Sherlock did not say out loud. _Because I always know, except, apparently, when it counts._

"If you have other plans, don't let me interfere," he said instead, unlocking his car. 

"No," Brook said. "I think I'll see this through to its conclusion." He opened the door, settled into the passenger seat. 

*

There was an officer in a patrol car parked at the edge of the property, and he waved Sherlock through once he'd flashed his badge. 

He glanced in the direction of the cornfield, those flattened, bloody stalks, and then very deliberately looked away. 

The farmhouse was sagging and ramshackle, paint peeling from sun-bleached siding.

Sherlock went up the porch and into the house without looking behind him to see if Brook followed. He flicked on his flashlight as he stepped inside, wrinkling his nose up at the musty, claustrophobic air inside the house. 

The floorboards creaked under his feet. He walked further inside, sweeping the flashlight beam into the corners. There was nothing to see. The ground floor of the house was dirty, moldy, and utterly empty of anything other than litter. 

"Nice place," Brook said behind him.

Sherlock ignored him, went up the stairs. There was a narrow hallway, three bedrooms, a bathroom at the end. 

He went into the first room. 

Furniture, piled up, disused and haunted beneath dusty white sheets. 

Sherlock went further into the room, whipped a sheet off of the first pile, covered his mouth with his sleeve to avoid breathing in the dirt and dust he'd kicked up. 

"Did you know that dust is largely comprised of human skin?" Brook asked. He'd come into the room behind Sherlock, was watching the dancing dust motes with some interest. He had not covered his mouth. 

"Yes," Sherlock said, distracted, irritated. He'd uncovered a desk, a rickety wooden affair. Three drawers. The finish around the pull on one of them had been worn away, smoothed by the frequent caress of a hand. 

He snapped on a latex glove, pulled the drawer open. 

Photographs. Yellowed, curling with age. He let his breath hiss out through his teeth as he picked up the stack, riffled through them. 

"Thinking of making a donation to the local history museum?"

Brook's voice finally cut through the fog. He glanced up from the photos, narrowed his eyes at Brook, who was still leaning in the doorway, watching the proceedings with that same detached, mildly amused expression he'd worn for the last hour or so. 

"The house belonged to Knight's grandmother," Sherlock said, looking away. There was something about Brook that unsettled him, but it wasn't immediately apparent. He didn't have time to dwell on it. "It was foreclosed. I took a gamble that some of her things might still be here." 

"And those old photographs are going to help you find Agent Watson?"

No, Sherlock thought, and resisted the urge to fling the entire stack across the room. They were useless, of course. Just a bunch of yellowed images of smiling people he didn't know or care about, people who had no bearing whatsoever on his investigation. 

He looked back down, anger coiling at the base of his spine. He flipped through the remaining pictures. 

Henry Knight as a child, smiling cheerfully. Henry Knight and a man with a strong enough resemblance that he had to be his father. 

Henry, in front of the farmhouse, cornfield sprawling behind him. 

Henry and his father on a hiking trail, matching grins on their faces. 

Sherlock's mother, stern and unapproachable, frowning up at the camera from her seat at a picnic table. 

He dropped the photographs. They fanned out across the floor, spilling every which way. He fell to his knees after them, graceless, stunned. His fingers were clumsy and cold as he grasped for them. Not this one. Not this one. This—there. 

It was his mother, unmistakably. 

It looked to be some kind of work function. An office picnic, perhaps. The expressions captured in the people around the table were all some variation of resigned discomfort. 

Enforced social interaction. His mother would have hated it. Hence the frowning. He was much like her, in that regard. 

He scanned the other faces in the photograph, his gaze catching on Henry's father in the mix. And another man, the youngest in the group by many years but still very much a part of it—a man in a suit that seemed just a shade formal for an outdoor picnic, his hooked nose a study in disdain, a slim cigarette clasped between long fingers. 

Oh— _oh._

The man who often lingered in Lestrade's office, silently watching them. The man that had, in Sherlock's mind, come to represent every truth he couldn't uncover, every brick wall he encountered in his path. 

What—what _was_ this?

"Did you find something?" Brook asked, and his voice was eager, greedy. He came forward, took the photograph out of Sherlock's hand. "This—what is this?" 

Sherlock snatched it back, did not answer. He looked around the room, for a moment dizzy with panic, uncertain of what he should be doing. 

_What on earth did you think your mother was doing at the State Department all those years? The typing?_

The Housekeeper had chided him, but there had been pity in her face as well. 

Years. Years he'd looked for some kind of link between his case and Henry Knight's, and to find it like this—it—

It wasn't pressing. 

Not right now, not with John's life hanging in the balance. 

He slipped the photograph into the pocket of his coat, turned back. Brook had picked up the remaining stack of photos, was looking through them with a bemused expression. 

"Might be easier for me to help you if you tell me what you're looking for," he said. 

Sherlock rolled his eyes, took the stack away from him. Flipped through several more shots of wide-eyed young Henry, untouched by tragedy and trauma. 

Stopped. 

Henry and his father, grinning. Backpacks and camping gear. Mountains behind them, wild country. Specifically, the Blue Ridge Mountains. He'd made something of a study of local topography, and—

_Not the time,_ John said gently.

Sherlock refocused, studied the picture.

"Henry was young, younger than he'd been when his father had first disappeared. But he'd never said that was their first camping trip. Maybe they made a habit of it. Maybe they went to the same place—" he paused, breathed out. "Ascending to the stars." 

Brook's head snapped up. "What was that?" 

Sherlock pulled out his phone, searched the phrase with frantic fingers. Blood was pounding in his ears. 

The first result made his knees buckle. 

"Skyland Mountain," he said. He held up his phone so that Brook could see the screen. Skyland Mountain, a year-round attraction in the Blue Ridge. Hiking, skiing, camping. An aerial tramway that promised sweeping views as visitors ascended to the stars. 

"You think that's where they're going?" 

"He's taking John back to where it all began for him," Sherlock said. "Where he was first taken." 

"Well," Brook said, and he squinted at the screen. "Let's go stop him."

*

Traffic was minimal, for once, and they cruised along at a steady pace. 

"When was the last time you slept?" Brook asked suddenly. His voice was jarring, shattering the heavy silence in the car.

Sherlock blinked to awareness. His fingers cramped from where they had curled around the steering wheel. He had been half-watching the road while sorting through facts in his mind palace. 

Overhead, the sun was beginning to sink towards the horizon. 

"I'm fine," Sherlock said, glancing at the clock. They had been on the road for almost three hours. 

Brook cleared his throat, shifted in his seat. 

"You know," he said, after a long pause. "Chernobyl. Exxon Valdez. Three Mile Island—big disasters, all of them. And they were all linked to sleep deprivation." 

Sherlock cut his eyes briefly towards Brook, then returned his attention to the road. 

"The US Department of Transportation estimates close to two hundred thousand fatal accidents each year are linked to sleep deprivation, too." 

"Clearly they didn't account for the number of people put to sleep by their mind-numbing statistics," Sherlock said. 

"I'd just prefer not to die on the side of the road," Brook said. 

"Oh, good. I'll keep that in mind. Separates you from the legions of people who _would_ prefer to die roadside." 

Brook cleared his throat again. "Look, you're upset. Understandable. But I'm actually trying to help you." 

"You can help me by shutting up," Sherlock said. "I can't think." 

Brook shut up. He turned his head to look out the window, his posture tense. 

*

The sun was just disappearing below the treeline when they arrived at Skyland Mountain. A cold wind had begun to whip through the area, bending treetops sharply under the weight of its persistence.

An attendant, bundled up against the chill in a sweatshirt with the mountain's logo, watched their approach with an expression of dismay. 

"Yes," he said, squinting down at the photo of Henry Knight that Sherlock pulled up on his screen. "That's the maniac that—yes. He's here. He blew through the gate not half an hour ago." 

"Was he alone?" 

"I think so," the man said. "Hard to tell. He was speeding." 

"How long does it take to get to the top of the mountain," Brook asked, glancing up into the gathering darkness.

"About an hour," the attendant said. "The road winds. You can't maintain any real speed once you get up there." 

Sherlock's mind helpfully provided him with an assortment of images from gruesome car accidents, high speed incidents on narrow roads, twisted steel losing the fight against stubborn wood. 

If John was still with Knight, he was likely bundled into the trunk. Bound. Gagged. Rendered compliant by a vest of explosives strapped to his chest. 

Assuming Knight hadn't just taken him out into a cornfield somewhere and blown him up before continuing his journey up the mountain. 

No. 

_No._

That was an unacceptable outcome. And a nonsensical one. If Knight was killing abductees, people he identified as _not real_ due to some kind of genetic alteration, then John did not fit his profile. 

No. Knight had chosen John—or had had John chosen for him—for another reason entirely. 

"The cable car," Sherlock said, wrenching his attention back to the present. He looked up at the wire cable, stretching up out of sight. "How fast can that get me to the top?" 

"Takes maybe fifteen minutes. But I can't let you up there. The wind—we're getting weather. Tonight. It's all been shut down." 

"This is a matter of life and death." 

"Yeah, your life. I'm not going to be responsible when that cable breaks and sends you crashing down onto the rocks." 

"Excellent," Sherlock said. "I'll be sure not to hold you responsible." 

He strode towards the tram entrance without looking back. 

Brook and the attendant followed, albeit reluctantly. 

"Call Lestrade," Sherlock said. "Tell him where we are. Tell him to send everyone he's got." 

"This is stupid," Brook said, eyeing the tram. Another gust of wind whistled through. The little shelter creaked. "This is very, very stupid." 

"There's no other way." 

Sherlock climbed into the tram. The inside was bare bones, two benches along the walls so that occupants could ride up facing one another. The benches had once been painted a vibrant blue, which had chipped and faded in spots, worn away by the movement of hundreds and thousands of people over the years. 

"Ascending to the stars," he murmured. Looked back at the attendant. 

The man was watching him with his lips pursed. He shook his head, resigned. Went over to the control stand. Pressed a button. 

A motor whirred to life. 

The tram jerked as the cable began to turn, lifting up and away from the platform. 

The sight of Brook and the attendant receding was vaguely dizzying, so Sherlock turned around, watched the ground flying by beneath him. He climbed up, up, up. Ascending. 

The rocks underneath, trees all around, swaying in the wind. Stars overhead, cold and sparkling, becoming ever more brilliant as the last of the sunlight bled away. 

The tram picked up speed, shuddered violently against a gust of wind. 

John was alive, he told himself. It was strange, alien to him, this need to reassure himself with things that he couldn't possibly be certain of. 

He was not one for guessing, not one for conjecture. He never had been. He dealt in truth—hidden truths, often enough, well-concealed—but truths nonetheless. 

He had no evidence to point to John's continued survival. And yet he believed it. Firmly. 

The tram swayed again, and he braced his hand against the tempered glass to steady himself. Wind whistled through an improper seal on the door. Did people take rides in these contraptions for _fun?_ He could hardly see the point. Seemed more likely to be used as an instrument of torture. 

He squinted up. There were lights slowly coming into view, gleaming in the distance high up ahead. There was a rest area of some kind at the top. Concessions, bathrooms. Hopefully a functional heater. 

The tram rocked again, nauseating. He braced himself, stared ahead, willed it to move faster. 

Fifteen minutes, the attendant had said. 

He squinted through the trees, but could see no telltale sweep of headlights. His own anxious breaths fogged up the glass and he stepped back. 

The tram was slowing, the drop in speed causing it to bump and sway wildly on the cable. 

He squinted ahead. He had not yet crested the top. 

The lights gleamed teasingly, just out of reach. The tram slowed further, stopped. The faint whine of the motor, the steady thrum and bump of the cable ceased, leaving him alone with only the sound of his own breaths and the whistling wind. 

He smacked his hands against the glass, frustrated, spun around to look behind him. There was nothing, nothing beyond the thick blanket of darkness, the swaying trees, the rocks below. 

Something was wrong. 

The tram had slowed, stopped. There had been no abrupt changes. Nothing that would indicate a mechanical problem. No. Someone had turned it off. 

He looked down at his phone, but, as expected, he had no signal. Not this far up in the hills. 

There was a tiny little security camera in the far corner, and he focused his attention on it, waved his arms. Waited. 

The little tram rocked with the wind. Minutes slipped by.

"For God's sake," he snapped, and wrenched open the door. Icy wind lashed against his face, whipped his coat back. 

He looked down at the ground, dizzyingly far away, and then directed his attention up. If he could get onto the roof of the tram, he'd be able to grab the cable. He could work his way along the cable to the next support post, climb down from there. 

The metal skin of the tram was cold. It shook again as the wind shrieked through the trees. 

He leaned out of the door, grabbed on to the roof. Hoisted himself up with a grunt of effort, lay flat against the icy metal to avoid being toppled by the wind. Breathed hard for a moment before pushing himself up on his elbows, then to his knees, reaching upward for the cable. 

Just as he grasped it, the car beneath him gave a shudder and ground into motion again. The cable jerked through his hands, slicing his palms. 

He hissed, fell backwards, nearly slid from the roof. He flailed out and grabbed hold of the edge, flattening himself down again. 

The tram picked up speed, racing towards the top now, the wind scouring his skin, his eyes watering helplessly. He shut his eyes, lowered his head, held on. 

Somewhere just over the ridge, Knight was speeding towards the same destination. With John. 

The tram jerked, shuddered, slowed. Came to a swaying halt, the platform in sight but out of reach. 

Sherlock did not waste time. He grabbed at the cable again, ignoring the sudden shock of pain in his sliced hands. He hoisted himself along the length of it, slow going, much too slow. 

He looked down, calculated the distance to the drop. He'd nearly reached the top. He couldn't do much more than turn an ankle, at this height. 

He shut his eyes, let go. Loosened his body, bent his knees to absorb the shock, tucked himself into a roll. He punched into the ground, flopped over onto his back, gasped for breath. Stood up, tested his limbs. 

Started to run. 

The pitch at the top of Skyland Mountain was steep and his dress shoes were entirely wrong for any kind of hiking. He slipped and stumbled as he dragged himself upward, upward, counting down the minutes in his head, too slow, _too slow._

There was a car idling at the top, engine running, headlights on. He staggered towards it, breathing hard. The trunk yawed open, empty. There was blood on the upholstery. 

"John!" he shouted, lurching away from the car, scanning his surroundings. Footprints, heading into the woods, crushing the stiff frosted grass flat against the ground. 

He broke into a run, following. 

"John!" he shouted again. The back of his throat tasted like copper. He was gasping for breath in the thin, cold air. The stars overhead were very bright. 

Voices. Just ahead. 

He skidded across the grass, bursting through the trees and into a clearing just as the sky tore open with white light, blinding, paralyzing. 

He couldn't see. He couldn't move. The very air felt like electricity, humming increasing to a crescendo that scraped against his nerves. 

_Sherlock!_ his brother had shouted, light pouring through the windows, illuminating his terrified face. And him, frozen, immobile, useless. 

He dragged himself forward, shielding his eyes with his arm. There was movement, just ahead, dark silhouettes, impossible to discern. 

"HENRY, STOP!" he yelled, his voice swallowed by the wind, the hum of—of—whatever that was. 

He blinked, squinted, and then Henry Knight was right in front of him. Sherlock tackled him to the ground just as the lights blinked out, plunging them into a stupefying darkness. The air seemed to ripple, and then all was still. 

Henry cried out in pain as his back impacted the ground, but he was laughing. He was _laughing._

"I GOT YOU, YOU BASTARDS," he scream-laughed, his head tipped back, blood seeping through the bandage on his shoulder. He had something in his hand, something he was fidgeting with, a button of some kind— 

_The detonator._

Sherlock slammed his head back against the ground, grabbed for his wrist, not caring about being gentle. He bent Henry's fingers back and the man howled beneath him, the little button dropping to the ground. 

"Boom," Henry said, pale and gasping now, but still smiling. His eyes were rapturous. They planted bombs among us, and I sent one to them." 

"What was that?" Sherlock demanded, shaking him. "What was that? _Where's John?_ "

"They took him," Henry said. 

"Who?"

"THEM!"

Sherlock reeled back, panting. Too late, he told himself. Too late, too late, _too late._

John had once smiled at him under the stars and taught him how to hold a baseball bat. John had teased him, John had kissed him and, more importantly, John had _cared_ and now—

The very air seemed to tremble with the sound of approaching aircraft, the thrum of propellers. A helicopter crested over the ridge, spotlight aimed at them. 

The laughter died in Henry's throat and he began to scream. 

*

The FBI had turned the little lodge at the top of the mountain into a makeshift command center. Henry had been cuffed and brought into a side room, where he sat in a wooden chair, his head lolling backwards. His face had gone very pale. 

"He needs to get to a hospital," one of the agents said, checking Knight's bandage. "He's lost a lot of blood." 

"I don't care," Sherlock said. He sat in the corner, his coat gathered up around him. 

"There's a medical transport en route," she said, ignoring him. 

He watched silently as she finished up and left the room, could hear the SAC discussing the situation with his team. 

Snippets of conversation battled for his attention, but he found himself unable to focus on anything in particular. 

"—still out there?"

"—blood in the trunk of the car, sending it for testing of course, but pretty sure it's Agent Watson—" 

"—killed an attendant—"

"—have to assume the worst—" 

"—detonator found at the scene—" 

"—cadaver dog and a search team—"

He shut his eyes, dropped his head into his hands. His limbs felt heavy, uncooperative. There was a prickling, hot feeling climbing up his chest, his throat. There was a rip in his trousers, his skin scraped and stinging from the rocks he'd clambered over. 

When he opened his eyes again, Knight was watching him. There was no malice in his expression, just pain and a sort of wide-eyed panic. 

"Where is he?" Sherlock asked, not really expecting a response. 

Knight shook his head. His lips had gone faintly blue. "I don't know. They took him instead of me. That was the deal." 

"What deal?" 

Knight made a sound that might have been a strangled laugh. 

"I'm sorry," Knight said. "He was real. I didn't want to hurt anyone real." 

Sherlock thought of Henry scrabbling with that button. Thought of him depressing the trigger, detonating John, removing John from the world in a cacophony of noise and sound and heat. Thought of the absolute horror, the absolute _wrongness_ of it all. Of sending John onto an alien craft—if that's what it had been—as a perverse version of a Trojan horse. John, his John, who was kind and good and deserved so much better than all of this. 

For a moment, for one terrible, clear moment, Sherlock saw himself calmly reaching for his gun, lifting it, and shooting Henry between the eyes. Watching him slump out of his chair onto the floor. 

Instead, he took another deep, steadying breath. Turned away, went out into the hall. 

Brook was waiting in the hallway, a paper cup of hot chocolate in his hand. 

Anger ignited past the exhaustion. "What happened to the tram? You almost got me killed." 

_And I was too late,_ he didn't add. 

"Mechanical failure," Brook said. "Hell of a stunt you pulled, climbing down like that. You're lucky to still be alive." He paused, cleared his throat. "The SAC wants your statement." 

Sherlock wanted to lash out, to eviscerate. Instead he whirled away, his thoughts tempestuous, roiling. 

The Special Agent in Charge was set up in the large lobby area, in front of a fireplace that had gone dark and cold. He stood as Sherlock entered, offered his hand and, presumably, his name. Sherlock ignored both. 

"If you could just give an abbreviated version of events, Agent Holmes?" 

Sherlock opened his mouth to speak, and then shut it at the sound of a commotion in the hallway. He stood up, followed. Already knew what he'd find. 

One of the agents was doing chest compressions on Knight where he'd fallen, limp and unresponsive. 

Lights flashed outside, heralding the arrival of the EMTs. Too late, Sherlock thought. Too late.

Everyone was too late. 

He swallowed, looked for Brook. Did not see his face amongst the small crowd of agents and police. 

Something tickled at the back of his mind. The snippet of conversation he'd half heard, half ignored. 

_Killed an attendant._

Had they meant the tram attendant? 

He turned back towards the SAC, who was watching the proceedings with a grim expression. 

"Who's dead?" he asked, aware that his voice sounded hoarse, slightly crazed, more than a little desperate. "I heard someone say—"

"This lunatic killed a park attendant on his way in. Shot him. By the tram station." 

"No," Sherlock said, but he could see it now, the handle of a gun peeking up from Knight's waistband. The ballistics would match, he knew. Oh, God, he'd been so _blind._

Brook.

John had seemed edgy, mistrustful around Brook, hadn't he? That day at the morgue? 

Brook had been alone with Knight when he'd first escaped at the hospital. Brook, coy in Lestrade's office. _I feel personally responsible._

He'd said it with a hint of amusement, like he and Sherlock had been in on some fantastic joke together. 

It had been Brook. Brook, slowing him down. Brook must have passed along John's information. Brook had killed the tram operator, Brook had stymied him at every turn. And then, as soon as he'd been alone with Knight, Brook had killed him. Planted the gun. 

Brook, who had been at once intelligent and bored, teasing and irritable. Brook, who had tagged along like a barnacle, impossible to shake, not quite fitting into any of the molds that Sherlock had tried to set for him. Brook, who he'd utterly and completely ignored, even when parts of his mind had twigged to the fact that there was something not quite right. 

He'd _missed_ it. He'd been so preoccupied, so distracted—

And because of him, because of his willful, stupid blindness, John had—

He doubled over, breathing hard, black spots dancing in his vision. One of the agents hovered at his elbow, speaking in a low, concerned voice. He ignored her. 

"The phone," he said, finally. "Knight had a phone. I need to see it." 

There were glances exchanged. Grim ones. He knew what those glances meant. 

"It's gone, isn't it?" 

"Yes," the SAC confirmed. "It's gone." 

*

He did not bother going home, did not bother changing, did not shower or shave. 

He went into Lestrade's office in his mud-stained clothes, his ripped trousers, his blood-stained shirt. He ignored the smell of smoke, fresh and heavy in the air. 

Lestrade did not say a word about his appearance, simply sat behind his desk and looked at him. His expression was resigned, unhappy. 

"You're saying that Agent Brook was hired or suborned by an outside agency to impede a federal investigation," Lestrade said. "That he, in fact, may have been involved in the very crimes he was tasked with investigating." 

"Yes," Sherlock said. "And that he is responsible for the death of our only suspect. Also a cable car operator at Skyland Mountain who was very much alive and well when I left him in the presence of Agent Brook." 

"I suppose it will come as no shock to you that he didn't show up for work today," Lestrade said. He sighed, leaned back in his chair. "Or that his phone number was disconnected, his apartment empty." 

"No," Sherlock said, and he let out a bitter little laugh. The smoke in the air tickled his nose, igniting a long-buried craving. "No, I'm not surprised at all." 

"Agent Watson," Lestrade said, and hesitated. "Do you believe him to be dead?" 

Sherlock shut his eyes. "I don't know." 

"There's not much I can do at this juncture." 

Sherlock rolled his eyes, stood up without a word, went for the door. 

"—but I can do this. I'm reopening the X Files unit." Lestrade pursed his lips, looked down at the desk. "Find your answers, Agent Holmes. Bring these bastards down." 

Sherlock laughed again, paused with his hand on the door. "Am I supposed to be happy?"

"No," Lestrade said. "You're supposed to use the resources at your disposal to do some damn good in the world." 

*

"I trust you're satisfied with the results," Mycroft said. 

The room was dim, smoky. His compatriots studied him with shadowed eyes, regarded him with grim faces. 

"You are certain that this cannot be traced back to us?" 

"We used one of Moriarty's to do the deed. Someone he planted within the Bureau a short while ago." 

"It was not long ago that you were warning all of us that Moriarty had become a loose cannon," Lady Smallwood said, her voice stern, disapproving. 

"There are times for precision tools, and times when a blunt instrument works just as well." 

"And this planted agent? I assume he's been removed?" 

Mycroft nodded, stubbed out his cigarette, went through the slow ritual of shaking a new one out of the box. Lighting it. Putting it between his lips for the first sweet drag. "He was directed to travel out of state to meet with one of our envoys for payment. A device was attached to his personal automobile and detonated this afternoon while he was en route." 

"Seems a bit over the top." 

He shook his head, looked out the window. "The device used was similar to the ones being utilized by Henry Knight in his little—misadventures. The FBI will assume a connection, and will spend an appropriate measure of time chasing their tails. We've nothing to worry about." 

"About Henry—" there was hesitance in Lady Smallwood's voice. Regret, possibly.

"Henry Knight had become a liability," Mycroft said. "He'd lost his mind. He was indiscriminate with his trust. It was only a matter of time before he recalled something that could have put us all in jeopardy." 

"Yes, but—"

"I liked his father too," he allowed. "But he made his choices. So did Henry. We all reap what we sow." He took another slow drag on his cigarette. "Eventually." 

"If it was necessary for him to be removed, then so be it," Lady Smallwood said. "But allowing Moriarty to use him as a plaything? That was barbaric. Even for you."

"A regrettable necessity." Mycroft winced, took another long pull on the cigarette. "Moriarty is rather deeply entrenched in our affairs. Extricating him at this point could prove fatal to all of us. Better to channel his attentions elsewhere." 

"He seems to have taken an interest in Agent Holmes." 

"Who hasn't?" Mycroft raised his brows. "But at this point, I daresay that Agent Holmes will be too preoccupied to cause us much trouble for the foreseeable future." 

"They've reopened the X Files unit." 

"All the better," Mycroft said. "At times, it is necessary to have someone out there championing the impossible. The wilder his allegations, the greater the odds that no one will believe him should he happen across the truth. Kill him, and you make him a martyr. There will always be others looking to take up the mantle, continue his crusade. Stand by and let him discredit himself, and he does our work for us." 

There was a murmur of assent. 

*

It was late when he left. 

He went out the door and made a right, as he always did, lighting a cigarette as he walked. The ember glowed red in the dark. He tapped out his steps with the end of his umbrella, though the sky was clear.

His black car was idling at the curb. He opened the door, ready to slip into the warmth of the back seat, and reeled back at the unexpected sight of someone waiting inside. 

"Agent Brook?" 

Brook was a mess. His pristine suit was rumpled and torn, his hair out of place, his face dirty. There was a splash of dried blood crusted at his temple. 

"Please," Brook said, lifting up a gun. "Have a seat." 

Mycroft assessed the situation. Then nodded, slipped into the seat beside Brook. Cleared his throat, folded his hands in his lap, umbrella resting between his knees.

Brook did not speak.

Mycroft tilted his head, studied him for a long, quiet moment as the car pulled back out into traffic. "Oh," he said, and pressed the side of his hand against his forehead. "Oh, forgive me. I have been slow to catch on, Mr. Moriarty." 

Brook—no—Moriarty, the elusive James Moriarty—grinned, leaned back in the seat. "You tried to have me killed." He spoke almost conversationally, casual, as if it were all a big joke. 

"To be fair, we believed ourselves to be eliminating a low level hired agent," Mycroft said. "I would think that you, of all people, should certainly be able to appreciate the need to tie up loose ends,"

"Yeah, okay, I can," Moriarty agreed.

"Why reveal yourself to me? You've been exceedingly careful about maintaining your privacy." Mycroft made a show of glancing around, before settling his unamused gaze back on the man next to him. "Unless you plan on killing me?" 

"No, I just wanted to—see for myself," the grin fell off of Moriarty's face. "Interesting." 

"Is it?"

"Very," he said.

Mycroft straightened up in his seat, scowled. "Well, now that I have your attention, perhaps you'll answer a few questions for me?"

"Hm, I might be willing to do that. Try me and we'll see." 

"What, may I ask, is being done with Agent Watson?" 

"A little of this, a little of that," Moriarty hedged. He grinned again. "I thought he'd be a bit of a challenge, but it was easy, really. You know. It's funny, how transparent you were about it all. Your little directives. _Get close to Sherlock Holmes._ " He giggled, rolled his eyes. " _Remind him that his position is fragile._ I'd say I succeeded, wouldn't you?" 

"Whatever directives you received, I can tell you with complete authority that you were not given carte blanche to kidnap a Federal Agent for the purpose of conducting unsanctioned experiments." 

"Who says I have him?"

"Don't you?" 

"Maybe. Maybe not. But. What did you want me to do? Scare him a little bit? Send him running back home to Sherlock?" his face darkened, a brief, twitching stormcloud of anger. "I don't think so. Agent Watson was a problem. Fortunately, every problem has a solution." 

"Indeed." 

"We haven't talked about your problem, though." 

"And what, may I ask, do you believe to be my problem?" 

"You're a man with a secret," Moriarty said. His voice had gone high and teasing. "I can respect that. A lot of people in the world have secrets, although—" he giggled. "—I don't think most of them are a patch on yours. Not everyone can claim to hold the fate of the entire world in their hands." 

"I'll thank you to come to the point. And quickly. We're almost to my building." 

"You're a man with a secret that needs keeping," Moriarty said, his voice dropping down to a sharp whisper. "And you're also a man with a deep, burning need to see someone unravel it. You can't tell the world what you've done, and you're in too deep to put an end to the whole mess yourself, so you're hoping that Agent Holmes does your dirty work for you." 

Mycroft pursed his lips, shifted in his seat. 

"That's why you wanted me to focus on Agent Watson, isn't it? To remind Sherlock Holmes that his work has real-life consequences? That he should stop with the moping and the navel-gazing and accepting all of those crap assignments like some kind of whipped puppy and get _on with it_ already. After all, your conspiracy isn't going to reveal _itself._ " He beamed over at Mycroft. "Well? How'd I do?" 

The car pulled to a stop, rolling gently up to the curb. 

Mycroft opened the door, stepped outside on to the street. He regarded Moriarty coolly, sweeping his eyes up and down his form. Then he turned and walked off, without a word. 

He lit a cigarette with a steady hand, raised it to his lips. 

*

Sherlock drove slowly, carefully, winding his way up the narrow road. His eyes skimmed the treeline, wheels bumping over the uneven surface. 

He felt the road beneath him, the wheels shimmying and juddering. Thought about what it might have felt like to travel this route blind, curled in the trunk, disoriented and afraid. Bleeding. 

He left his car parked in the same spot where Henry had left his, walked down the path into the woods, came out in the clearing. 

There were no lights. No voices, no shouting. Just cold air, bright stars, clear skies. 

He sat down on the grass, pulled his coat around him. 

In his pocket was the photograph he'd taken from the farmhouse. He took it out, looked at it.

Faces, frozen in time. Unlikely faces. Henry's father. His own mother. An assortment of strangers. And the man, the one from Lestrade's office. The one without a name. 

He stared and stared until his vision had started to blur, until he felt sick and weary and angry. His breath shuddered out through his nose in something akin to a sob, and he forced it down, breathed hard. 

Then he put the photograph back into his pocket, tilted his head up, looked at the stars.


	10. Unhappy Returns

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a brief note on content in this chapter: a good chunk of this part of the story follows along with the XF episode "One Breath." In keeping with that episode, there are some discussions about terminating life support/DNRs and living wills. While the discussions are somewhat amicable in the XF world, they do get rather heated in parts here.

*

_November_

 

His mother's Greenwich home was, somehow, even more imposing under stark November skies. The leaves had drifted from the trees, leaving bare branches stretching out like grasping limbs, no soft foliage to hide the rambling edges of the house. 

Sherlock went up the steps to the front door. Noted the porch swing, draped with a tarp against the impending New England winter. The tidy little bucket of sand tucked right up alongside, fresh cigarette butts right up on top. Lipstick stains on the filters, his mother's favored shade. 

She'd resumed her habit in earnest, then. 

He'd had no memories whatsoever associated with the Greenwich house. It was, simply, the place where his mother lived. Now, the ghost of Sherrinford was everywhere. 

His mother opened the door before he'd even reached for the bell. She'd likely heard his car, recognized his steps. Her senses were as sharp as ever. 

"Typically calling ahead is a courtesy," she said, but held the door open to admit him. 

He shrugged, unbothered. "I wouldn't consider this a social call." 

"No, I suspect not." She looked at him for a long time, pale eyes narrowed. 

He looked back, held her gaze steadily.

"I haven't seen you in months," she said, finally.

He paused, not quite able to parse her tone. "Is that disappointment I detect because it's been too long, or because it hasn't been long enough?" 

"Funny," she said, which clarified nothing. "You always were funny." 

"Mm," he agreed. They had stalled in the hallway, regarding each other. On guard.

"Well," she said, clapping her hands together. "Should I put on a pot of coffee, or is this something that can be gotten through quickly?"

"No need to waste time on idle chitchat." 

"Thank God for that. What is it, then?"

He swallowed. Reached into his pocket, his fingers closing around the curled edge of the photograph. He felt oddly hesitant, as though he were standing at the edge of some unknown precipice. 

"Oh," she said, when he handed it to her. 

Her face showed very little. He was unsurprised. He was, as he'd been told, very much like his mother. 

"The man in the photo—"

"Charles Knight," she said, brusque. "I _do_ watch the news, you know. I am aware of what his son got up to." She eyed him. "You were the one to bring him in." 

"Yes," Sherlock swallowed again, looked away for a moment. His mouth had gone dry. "Not in time to—um. Someone I worked with. He was—hurt." 

"Well," she said. "You picked a hazardous career." 

"Yes." 

She sighed. "I assume you've got questions. Otherwise, you'd just have mailed that to me and called it done." 

He looked down at the photo in her hand, back up to her face. Did not speak.

"I worked for the State Department," she said. "You already knew this. So did Charles Knight." 

"And this man?" he waved vaguely at the other man, the sour-faced specter with his perpetual cigarette. 

She did not follow his gaze, instead fixed her attention on his face. Her eyes were wide, her brow creased. Angry. "They all worked for the State Department. It was a company picnic. Couldn't you work that out for yourself?" 

He thought the image looked rather funereal, himself, but he tended towards a rather funereal demeanor himself when forced into social functions, so he let that one slide. 

"Charles Knight disappeared several years ago under disturbing circumstances—" 

"Charles Knight was an adulterer and a drunk. Such men are rather prone to disappearing." 

"—Under disturbing circumstances very similar to what happened to Sherrinford." 

She did not blink, did not react. "Your brother fell off a bridge." 

"That wasn't him," he said. "You know that." 

"Yes," she said, and she sounded very tired. "So you've said." 

He breathed out through his nose, frustrated. 

"I don't know what you'd like me to say. Yes, I once sat next to a man of dubious moral fiber at a company picnic. That man's son went on to do a terrible thing. End of story." 

"Henry Knight has memories of the night his father disappeared. Memories that are eerily similar to my own." 

She shut her eyes. When she spoke, her voice was brittle. "You swore up and down that night that you had no idea whatsoever what happened to your brother. You then spent God knows how many years running around in another country, injecting yourself with God-knows-what. Forgive me if I don't leap to trust any memories that you claim to have recovered in the interim." 

Her words stung. He schooled his face so as not to show it, pushed on doggedly. "This is connected. I've done tests. My DNA—it's been altered, somehow." 

"What on _earth_ are you talking about?" 

"Abductees," he said, speaking rapidly now, the words coming too fast to filter. "Other abductees that I've encountered in the course of my work. They display similar—anomalies." 

"If anything in your blood has changed, may I again direct your attention to your so called _lost years_ in England?" She drew herself up, stiff-shouldered, face closed off. "Have you come to ask questions or make accusations?" 

"The man in the photo. With the cigarette. I need to know who he is." 

"I don't remember his name." 

That, spoken with a quick flick of her eyes to the left. A lie. A blatant lie, one she must have known he'd catch. 

"Can you give me names of anyone in this photograph? Anyone else at this table?" 

"Why? What could possibly come of this?" 

"I think there's a strong possibility that other families may have been—targeted. Like ours. Through your job." 

"Preposterous." 

"The government knows about this," he said, dropping his voice, imploring. "It wouldn't be the first time they've done something like this to citizens they're supposed to protect."

"I—" she opened her mouth, shut it again. Something flickered in her eyes, was swiftly quashed. "You'll have to leave. I'm late for my paint group." 

She walked off without another word, heels clicking on gleaming floors. 

*

"Oh my, where on _earth_ did you find that old thing?" 

He stood in a grocery aisle, giving an assortment of protein drinks a far closer scrutiny than they actually warranted. Next to him, the Housekeeper, innocuous in a long floral dress, stood holding a box of granola bars. Pressed to the back of the box, held steady by one neatly trimmed fingernail, the photograph. 

"Please," he said. "Can you tell me if you recognize anyone?"

"Of course I do," she tsked, placed the box back on the shelf. The picture fluttered down to rest behind it He reached up, scooped up both photo and box, placed it in his basket. "I was the one holding the camera." 

He straightened up, regarded her with new interest. 

"Well you recognize your mother, of course, and Charles Knight. And—" her voice trailed off, gone appraising, sly. "Oh. _Oh,_ well, now. That _is_ interesting." 

"My brother Sherrinford," he said, tearing his gaze away and forcing himself to look back at the drinks on the shelf. Just two shoppers, sharing space. Nothing more. "The circumstances surrounding his disappearance are—they're very similar to what happened to Charles Knight. I need to know if it's happened to anyone else." 

"Oh," she said, and her voice went soft with some measure of sympathy. "You'd like to know, because you believe that if you can figure out the pattern, you might be able to save your friend." 

He swallowed. "It's been three weeks. Three weeks, and I have nothing. No answers." 

His vision had blurred. He blinked, stared hard at the drinks. Mango Kiwi Tropical Swirl? Who the hell bought this stuff? 

"I can't give you the answers you need," she said. "But those people in the photographs—don't waste your time trying to find a pattern. It exists. That's all you need to know. They have all, in some way, been touched by the same experience you have." 

"Abductions." 

"Abductions, tests, experimentation—" she waved her hand in the air. "You name it." 

"Why were they targeted? What were they working on that—"

"You're asking the wrong questions," she said. Shook her head. "I have to go. It's a risk, every time we meet. I must assume I'm being watched." 

"Then why meet me at all?" 

"I needed to do my weekly shopping," she shrugged, picked up a can of protein drink, added it to her basket.

He blew out a frustrated breath. "If I'm asking the wrong questions, what are the right ones?" 

"We all make choices, Agent Holmes. Our lives are little more than a series of them." 

"You're saying they weren't targeted. That they—that they chose this. That they willingly—?"

"Oh, I'm not saying anything at all, in fact. Have a good day, Agent Holmes." She went off down the aisle in a sweep of floral print, did not look back.

*

There were cases. 

He shunted them aside unless they had to do with abductions, disappearances, extraterrestrials. Those he hoarded jealously, sat up late into the night reading until the text was burned into his retinas, until his dreams—when he dared sleep—were filled with cold white light, black-eyed beings with remorseless demeanors, helpless screams. 

None of it brought him any closer to finding John. 

Forensic and evidence teams had combed the mountain. They'd brought dogs. 

He found fault with everything, generally, but even he had to admit the search was thorough. Although his suggestion that they should, perhaps, consider expanding their search outside of the terrestrial realm was not particularly well-received. 

He spent hours thinking back on the Bellefleur case, running Jennifer Wilson's haunted recollections over and over and over in his mind, looking for some spark of inspiration, something he'd missed. 

_Everything went white. It wasn't natural. It was cold._

Henry Knight, illuminated. He'd rushed forward, tackled him to the ground. He'd been certain that John was with him, but John was—John was—

 _Like a hospital. But not—not like any hospital I'd ever been to._

Baskerville? Some place like it? 

Or worse, the cold sterile interior of a space ship, light years from home? 

The US government did not, at present, possess technology that could disappear a person in a flash of icy white light. At least as far as he knew. And he made something of a habit of learning about that sort of stuff. 

_They gave me something._

_It felt like something crawling in my blood._

_Our eyes had gone black._

Over and over and over. He could find nothing of use. Nothing at all. 

"You must have some thoughts," he'd hissed once, furious. "Help me, for God's sake. Talk it through." 

But the John in his head had gone silent. 

*

_December_

 

The city ramped up for Christmas. 

Tinsel, everywhere. Jingling bells. Poinsettias and ugly red sweaters and blinking lights. Festive music, repetitive, ceaseless. Stores choked with people. 

He ignored it all. 

On Christmas Eve, he found his basement office to be a welcome retreat, quiet and dark and cluttered. He had only partially unpacked, only partially re-settled into his old space. Many of his belongings remained in cardboard boxes, shoved up against the wall. 

He had put a few things in their place. His poster, the blurry UFO and the _I Want to Believe_ text that had been his mantra over the years. His skull paperweight was back on the desk. 

But the only clippings he'd put up on the walls were ones to do with John's case. 

Henry Knight's face grinned maniacally out from smudged newsprint. The papers had gone out of their way to locate and run a photograph of him that made him look as unsettling as possible. Mad bombers sold more copy, he supposed. 

The photographs of John, the heroic federal agent ( _Missing, presumed dead_ ), had been chosen with equal care. He looked professional, stoic, every bit the hero. 

Missing, presumed dead. 

_Missing, presumed dead._

Those words snuck up on him at odd times, he'd found. Sitting in his chair, eating takeout Chinese directly from the carton, he'd swallow and think: Missing, presumed dead. Or while showering, eyes half-closed as he lathered his hair with shampoo, the thought would occur: Missing, presumed dead. Once, he'd had the thought while standing in line at the grocery store, and he'd placed his basket carefully on the ground and walked out without a glance back. 

_Missing, presumed dead._

He presumed no such thing. John was out there, somewhere. He could be found. And Sherlock would find him. 

He'd been a child when Sherrinford had disappeared. A helpless, confused child. That was no longer the case. He was brilliant. Without peer, they'd said back in the academy. He had resources. _He would find John._

The abduction leads had dried up. He had nothing, no fresh cases. 

He'd scanned a copy of the photograph to the boys at the _Irregular News,_ but it had gone nowhere. Facial recognition software had turned up a few State Department employees, just as his mother had said. The majority were long deceased. Their families had no interest in speaking with him. 

The man with the cigarette might as well have been a ghost. 

He flipped idly through his files, looking for something, anything to catch his attention. Anything to spark a little interest, a tiny thrill.

A house, just outside the city, long-suspected to be haunted. Its long and sordid history boasted multiple murder-suicides over the years, all on Christmas Eve. 

He could go. A little merry breaking and entering, a scare to get the blood pumping. 

He toyed with the idea for a long moment, set it aside. He could muster up no enthusiasm for exploring a haunted house on his own. Not anymore. 

He wondered when it was that he'd lost the knack for being on his own. He'd preferred it, once. Hadn't he? 

*

When he could no longer think of reasons to stay in the basement, he gave up and made his way back to his apartment. It was late. The roads were nearly empty. 

He stepped out of the elevator into the hallway of his building. There was a woman sitting on the floor with her back against his front door, her knees drawn up under her chin. She appeared to be asleep. 

He cleared his throat as he approached. 

She lifted her head, and he stopped walking. He regarded her for a long moment, taking it all in. The red-rimmed eyes, the messy blonde hair. She was a stranger to him but her face was familiar. 

"Harry Watson, I presume," he said. 

She made a bleary snuffling noise, got awkwardly to her feet. 

He held out his hand to shake, left it hanging awkwardly as she ignored it. 

"What time is it?" 

He shrugged. "Either very late or very early." 

"Right," she said, and looked at the door. "Are you going to invite me in?" 

"I don't know," he said, turning his key in the lock. "Am I?" 

"Yes." She shouldered past him, then hesitated, her boldness draining away in the new surroundings. 

He stepped around her, sniffed the air as he did so. She'd been drinking, but not excessively. Liquid courage, most likely. He hung his coat, sat down on the couch. Cleared his throat. 

After a moment, she joined him in the living room, sat down in the little wooden chair by the desk. He studied her in the lamplight, looking for clues, looking for anything he could find.

"Why are you here?" he asked, finally. 

"Do you have any leads?" 

He pursed his lips, looked down at his hands. 

"No," she said, and her tone was edgy, snide. "Of course you don't. Mind explaining why the FBI doesn't seem at all interested in finding my brother?" 

"I can assure you—" 

"Can you?" she stood up, gripping the back of the chair. Her knuckles had gone white. "Can you really _assure_ me? Because my brother's been gone for two months, and no one can bother to even return my calls to tell me what's going on." 

Sherlock was already taking his phone out of his pocket. "Give me your number, and—"

"Forget it," she moved towards the door, stopped, looked back. "I wanted to get a look at you. That's part of the reason why I came here. Wanted to see the reason he'd spent last Christmas all mopey, wanting to get back to work." 

Sherlock blinked. 

"He would've followed you anywhere," she said. Her voice was raw, but strident, bolstered by her own righteous anger. She puffed out her chest. "Anyone could see that. He thought you were some big genius. And you can't even find him." 

He opened his mouth, found he had nothing to say. 

"He's dead, isn't he?" she asked, staring hard at him from the door. "No one wants to say it, because they haven't—found—him. But—" 

"No," he said, finding his voice. He stood up. "No. I don't believe that he is." 

She looked at him for a moment, and then went out the door without another word. It swung shut behind her. 

He stared at the door, and then rubbed his face with the palm of his hand. He was tired, somehow, in spite of not having done much of anything. 

He looked down at his phone. There were voicemails.

He dialed in to his mail box, sank back down onto the couch. 

"Holmes," Anderson's voice, caught somewhere between cheerful and awkward. "Calling to wish you—"

"—a Merry Christmas," Raz, sounding out of breath, like he'd run into the room to join the conversation. 

"—or a happy whatever holiday of your choosing," Wiggins, flat and disinterested as ever. "Or you could join us in rejecting modern commercialism—" 

"We'll be watching _Die Hard_ and drinking egg nog tonight if you're interested!" Anderson interjected. 

" _Die Hard?_ When did we decide that? I thought—" Raz, muffled in the background. 

There was a rustling sound, and the call disconnected. 

He took the phone away from his face, stared at it for a moment, bemused. Played the next message. 

Molly Hooper's tremulous voice. "Agent Holmes. Sherlock. I'm just calling to—well. I wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas. I know that things aren't—erm. I never really know what to say," that, spoken in a frustrated huff. She took a deep breath, ploughed on. "But if you ever needed a—friend, or—or someone to talk to—just—it would be fine. You can—it wouldn't be an imposition. I'd be happy to. All right? So. Merry Christmas." 

He swallowed, shut his eyes. Then he deleted both messages, set the phone down on the coffee table. Stretched out on the couch, the comfortable contours welcoming him. He shut his eyes. 

*

 _January_

 

He went straight from the airport to FBI headquarters, unshaven, suit rumpled and still smelling of smoke and ash. 

People in the terminal gave him a wide berth, side-eying him as he went by. He pretended not to notice.

Lestrade was clearly waiting for him. His secretary waved him right through. He pretended not to notice her pursed lips, her wrinkled nose. He'd been getting good at pretending not to notice things. 

"Sit down," Lestrade said, not looking up from his desk.

Sherlock sat. The room did not smell of smoke. He noticed that.

"You look like hell." 

Sherlock shrugged. "Your message did say to come straight in when my flight landed." 

"Care to explain yourself?" 

"Considering I haven't even had an opportunity to shower and change my clothes, it would be a little premature to expect a full report." 

Lestrade shut his eyes, breathed through his nose. His hands moved restlessly atop his desk, half-curling into fists. "I received a call from the LAPD."

"A complaint?"

"Not exactly. They were complimentary," Lestrade said. "To a point. You did solve their case for them. But they were concerned." 

"About what?"

"About you," Lestrade snapped. "Because you apparently disregarded orders and ran straight into a burning building."

"There was evidence—" 

"You risked your life for evidence." 

"Oh, please," Sherlock said, rolling his eyes, sitting up straight. He knew he looked petulant, childlike, didn't care, suddenly felt a pressing need to push Lestrade. " _Risked my life._ The building wasn't close to collapsing—" 

"But it did collapse, didn't it?" Lestrade's voice was dangerously steady. 

"Eventually, yes." 

"And the evidence you went in for?" 

Sherlock swallowed, looked away. "Not there." 

"So you risked your life. For no good reason." 

"I had no way of knowing that these particular cultists—"

"Save it for your report," Lestrade said. "Which I do still expect. Before the day is done." 

He wondered how Lestrade was going to react to the rest of it, which, if he was being perfectly honest, wasn't much better. He'd flown out to Los Angeles on a whim after getting a report of a murder that matched the profile of a vampiric blood cult he'd been tracking off and on over the years. 

And, once he'd ascertained that the murder matched the pattern of previous cases, it had been short work to deduce the nightclub the perpetrators were using as their hunting grounds. And, from there, it had only seemed logical to go in on his own and see if he could draw their attention. And— well. In retrospect, I had been a bad idea.

Lestrade was still speaking. He blinked, refocused. His thoughts had been slipping, lately. He was missing things, and not because he'd willingly tuned them out. 

"—can I do? Tell me what to do. This has to stop. I can't just sit back and watch this happen."

"Watch what happen?" 

"This—this self-destruction you seem determined to carry out." Lestrade cleared his throat, shifted in his chair. His stare was uncomfortably direct. "Over these last few months, I've seen you push yourself beyond all reason, all sense. And maybe I should have stepped in sooner, I don't know. You're not—I never know with you. What's healthy and what isn't." 

"Who is he?" 

Lestrade paused, gave him an odd look. "What?" 

"You asked what you can do. Tell me how to find him. The smoking man." 

"Why, so you can exact revenge?" Lestrade shook his head, looked away. "I don't know who he is. He's not FBI. CIA, maybe. High up there. Those people don't have names. They're not accountable." 

"Everyone's accountable to someone." 

"I learned early on to keep my head down and not ask questions," Lestrade said. "You seem to have missed that lesson." 

"Ah," Sherlock said. "So I keep my mouth shut, and maybe someday I, too, can rise to the esteemed ranks of Assistant Director?" 

Lestrade shut his eyes. "That's not—" 

"If you can't help me, we're done with this conversation." He stood, smoothed his rumpled jacket. 

"We're done with this conversation when I say we are," Lestrade said, standing up. His jaw was tight. 

Sherlock paused, waited. 

Lestrade's face softened slightly, he sighed. "Look. Agent Watson. He—he was a good agent. I liked him. I respected him. He worked well with you, which is more than I can say for—well, just about anyone. But—" 

"I have no interest in continuing a conversation about John Watson in the past tense," Sherlock said. He took in Lestrade's stricken expression for a moment, added: "You'll have your report by the end of the day." 

He did not quite slam the door on his way out, but it was a near thing.

*

_February_

 

Harry Watson ordered a memorial tombstone. 

She asked him to meet her at the cemetery to view it, when it was completed. She did not tell him how she'd gotten his number, nor why she'd apparently softened in her stance towards him. 

He did not ask. 

He did not speak. Stood staring at it, a bit of gray stone that was, in some way, meant to symbolize everything that John had been.

She spoke. She spoke a lot. Presumably sharing memories or some nonsense. He tuned her out, his ears ringing, a strange and uncomfortable tightness in his chest. Stared at the stone. 

_We'll talk later,_ he'd said. 

He cleared his throat. Shut his eyes. When he opened them again, Harry was still talking. 

"—things," she said.

She looked at Sherlock, raised her brows. Clearly a response was expected. 

"Um," he said.

"I'm going to donate everything. There's not much." 

What? 

"What?" 

She tilted her head at him. "Were you not—were you not listening?" 

He looked away. "Thinking." 

"Right," she said. She sounded uncomfortable. "I just said that, um, I spoke with the people at John's building. About terminating his lease. They were very understanding. I'm going to be heading over there this afternoon, packing up his things." 

He shook his head. "It's too soon for that. You can't just—" 

"It's been more than three months, Sherlock. And not a word. Not a sign," she shook her head, sniffed hard. "He's gone. It's time to move on. Whatever he had in his bank accounts has been drained, and I'm not paying rent on an empty apartment when I can barely afford my own. " 

"He's not dead." 

"How can you say that?" Her eyes flashed and she angled more fully towards him, fists clenched. "A man who liked to take people to remote locations and _blow them up_ took my brother. When you caught up to him, there was blood in the car, but no John. You don't actually have to be a genius to figure out what happened." 

"He was there." 

"Oh, right. He was there and was then abducted by aliens, right?" 

"It—" 

"Just stop it!" she shook her head, looking frustrated, near tears. "I can't hear this. He might have put up with your crazy talk, but I—I'm trying to do the right thing. Including you in this. Because he—would have—you were pretty much his only friend—" 

Sherlock took an unsteady breath. 

"—and he wouldn't have wanted me to. Hate you. So—" she looked helplessly at him. "Don't make me hate you. All right?" 

What the hell was he meant to say to that?

"What the hell am I meant to say to that?" 

She laughed, a little incredulously, and the gesture was achingly familiar. "Nothing. Just—have a nice life." 

"Wait," he said. 

She stopped a few paces away, turned back to look at him. 

"I'll—his things. I can take them. To donate. If you want." He forced a bland smile. "I'd like to help."

She stared at him for a long moment, eyes narrowed. Then she nodded. "Yeah, all right. Stop by later. I'll have it all bagged up." 

*

John's belongings fit neatly into three large bags. 

Sherlock took everything back to his own apartment, dropped them into his unused bedroom amidst the piles of boxes and file folders, shut the door. 

He sat down on his couch, rested his chin on his fingertips. Breathed. 

The massive search that had been initiated for Special Agent John Watson had been scaled down. He was _missing, presumed dead_ , after all. He was an unsolved case, a mystery, and the search for his remains was not at the top of anyone's priority list. 

General consensus was that Henry Knight had disposed of John somewhere between abducting him in his apartment and arriving at the top of Skyland Mountain. The blood in the trunk had matched John's. Knight was a bomber, he'd had no explosives on him at the time of his arrest but he had been carrying a detonator or switch of some kind. 

One did not have to be a genius to work it out.

Of course, they ignored the obvious flaw in the theory, which was that _John had been at the top of Skyland Mountain with Knight._

He knew it. 

He _knew_ it. 

John wasn't in pieces in some cornfield somewhere, waiting for some farmer or dog walker or hiker to make their sad discovery. He had been at the top of Skyland Mountain with Henry Knight, and he had vanished into that blinding, paralyzing light. 

All but Sherlock seemed determined to speak about him in the past tense, to talk about what a fine man he'd been, what a good friend, what a great agent. 

It was repellant. 

Even his own sister, giving up, giving away his possessions like they didn't matter, like he wouldn't one day come home and need them. 

He closed his eyes and was on Skyland Mountain again, breathing hard, scrambling across hard ground with the taste of copper in his mouth and his heart thudding in his ears. 

Voices. Shouting. Indistinct. The very air humming and rippling, the hair on his arms standing on end, his skin prickling. Light, unnatural, cold and white and blinding, fixing him in place, making him a child once more, slack-jawed and helpless. 

Silhouettes in the light, struggling, impossible to see clearly. Something in the air, hovering, just out of sight. The light seemed to penetrate to his very bones and he tried to shut his eyes against it but it ignited the thin skin of his eyelids, no relief from its terrible onslaught. 

He dragged himself forward, shielding his eyes with his arm. 

"HENRY, STOP!" he shouted, dizzy with it, with déjà vu and confusion and the electric hum in the air vibrating in his veins. 

He tackled Henry, knocking the man flat on his back. There was no one with him in the clearing. 

They were alone. 

But there had been _voices._

Henry was laughing. Laughing and screaming and bleeding, not struggling up from where Sherlock had him pinned. 

There was something in his hand, a button under his fingers, and Sherlock lunged for it, too late, _too late_ as Henry pressed and pressed and pressed and shouted "I GOT YOU, YOU BASTARDS" in an exultant voice. 

And above them, the light _shattered._

The electric hum dropped off abruptly, the shriek of metal grinding together, tearing apart. Fire erupted overhead, flaring outward in a hot rush that pressed Sherlock against the ground, his skin stinging. And he forced his eyes open, staggered to his knees and then to his feet, watched as something, _something_ , some kind of craft, like nothing he'd ever seen before, drop in flaming pieces to the rocks below. 

His ears were ringing. He was bleeding, he realized, something hot and wet trickling down the side of his face. Still, he could hear Henry laughing. Laughing. 

"Boom," Henry said, from where he lay on the ground. Blood had seeped through the bandage of his shoulder wound. "Boom. I got you, you bastards." 

"What did you do?" Sherlock demanded of him, dropping to his knees in the dirt again. He already knew. Henry had sent them a gift, had sent them John, but he'd sent John giftwrapped in Semtex, oh, God, that had been _John_ up there, and—

He sat up, gasping, _gasping_ and flailing, wanting to grab, to hurt, to lash out. The room was dark and still and he dug his hands into the cool leather of his couch, reorienting himself, breath rasping in his throat. 

He was not on Skyland Mountain. 

He must have fallen asleep while thinking, and that was its own kind of worrying, really, but—

His ears were still ringing. 

He took another shuddering breath, forcing himself calm. His back was slicked with sweat.

It wasn't his ears, he realized belatedly. It was his phone.

His phone. 

He fumbled around on the coffee table for it, snatched it up. 

"Holmes," he said. 

The voice on the other end of the line was cool, professional, clipped. "Sherlock Holmes? I'm calling from Northeast Georgetown Medical Center. You've been listed as an emergency contact for a John Watson?" 

*

He did not remember driving to the hospital.

He must have done, because he found himself running through the sliding glass doors and past a startled security guard, shoes slapping against the ground. 

He shouted until someone threatened to throw him out, and then he showed his badge and shouted some more until a furious-looking nurse finally escorted him down a long hallway to a tiny room, and he found himself staring down at John. 

_John._

He was pale, and small, and so utterly, terribly still in the narrow bed. His chest rose and fell evenly, precisely, ventilator hissing. There were tubes, and wires, and persistent beeping, and—

He took a step forward into the room. Stopped. 

"How?" he demanded of the nurse. "How did he get here? Who brought him? What happened?" 

He scanned John even as he spoke. He was too hot and too cold all at once, nausea creeping in, sweat trickling down his spine. His vision blurred. There was nothing—he could see nothing. No bandages. No bruising. No obvious trauma. 

John could have simply been asleep, were it not for the utterly unnatural stillness to him. Not a twitch. Not a murmur. Not a flicker of his eyelids. Just the slow, measured rise and fall of his chest. 

"How?" he demanded again. 

"I don't—"

"HOW?" he whirled away from John, blood roaring in his ears. 

Someone cleared their throat. 

He looked away from the nurse. A doctor in a white lab coat had stepped up, regarding him with a deeply unimpressed expression. 

She also had two cats and a smoking habit she was trying to quit, but Sherlock supposed there was no particular need to point that out at the moment. 

"I'm afraid we have no information on how Mr. Watson—" 

"Doctor," Sherlock corrected crisply.

She cleared her throat. "How Dr. Watson ended up in this condition." 

"Who brought him here?" 

"I don't have that information."

"Then who does?" 

She cleared her throat again, clearly annoyed. "The note in his chart says he was found in the parking lot, Mr.—?"

"Holmes," he said, holding up his badge for good measure. "Special Agent Holmes. FBI."

"Agent Holmes," she said. "Right. Well, I'm Dr. Stapleton. And—" 

"I don't care," he said. "Please, just get to the point." 

She stared at him for a long moment, clearly biting back whatever it was that she wanted to say. She took a deep breath. "As I said, Dr. Watson was found just outside the entrance to our Emergency Room. Someone had clearly brought him here, but did not escort him inside." 

"I'm going to need video—"

"You are welcome to speak with our security team," she said. "Our immediate priority was beginning treatment." 

Sherlock opened his mouth. She held up her hand. 

"Now. As you can see, he's currently intubated. Presently, we have him listed under critical condition, comatose. He has complete unawareness of self or environment, no evidence of language comprehension or voluntary response to external stimuli." 

"What—" Sherlock shook his head. The words did not seem to penetrate. He understood perfectly what she was saying, but—

"Frankly, we're at a loss," she said. "There are no indications of acute injuries, no degenerative disorders. We've run every type of test that we can, and I—well. There doesn't appear to be any reason for Dr. Watson to be in this state. I don't know how long he's even _been_ in this state. And I can't even begin to formulate a prognosis." 

He opened his mouth, shut it again. Tried to form words. Failed. Swallowed. Opened his mouth again. "What—then what possible good are you?" 

"And that's quite enough, I think," she said. "I'll ask you to leave now, Agent Holmes. Feel free to return when you've calmed down." 

"Calmed down?" he reared back. "I am _perfectly_ calm—" 

And now there were footsteps, coming at a bit of a rush. Security guards, no doubt. Best to avoid a scene. It wouldn't do for him to get himself banned from the unit entirely, then he'd have to resort to disguises, and that was horribly inefficient. 

He spun away from her, giving one last glance at John before sweeping off down the hallway.

*

He sat down in his car, set gloved hands on the wheel. Breathed for a moment. Lowered his forehead to rest against his hands. 

The air was cold. There were things he should be doing. He should—he should start the engine. He needed to make phone calls. Lestrade. Harry, he supposed. 

"And how is the patient?" 

He jolted upright, his gaze flying to the rear view mirror. The Housekeeper sat primly in the back seat of his car, regarding him with somber eyes. 

"What is this?" he asked. "What's happened to him?" 

"Terrible things, I'm sure," she said.

"Someone must know." 

"Of course someone knows," she made a tutting sound. "They're just not telling. I don't have all the answers, you know. Only some. I'm retired." 

He curled his lip, swallowed down his frustration. "And do you know more than what you're telling about this? In particular?" 

She gave him a long, considering look. "If I were still in the business—which I'm _not,_ mind you—but if I were, and If I were concerned about someone meddling in my affairs, I'd be willing to do whatever it took to make that person stop."

"You're saying he was targeted because of me." 

"I'm saying that if you wanted to distract someone so thoroughly, crush their spirit in such a manner as to render them utterly harmless, to remove all possibility of threat, of retaliation, what would you do?"

"I—" he trailed off, hesitant, uncomfortable.

"You would take away something they love. But you wouldn't kill it, not right away. Do you know why?" 

He did not speak. Found he could not quite meet her eyes in the mirror. 

"Anger," he said, finally. "Love is—it can be a vicious motivator." 

"And believe me, the last thing they want is to motivate you." 

He lifted his gaze. She was watching him steadily. 

"To crush someone so completely—to thoroughly destroy them—it's not about simply hurting them. You must take away their hope. Returning Agent Watson to you was not a kindness. They mean to give you hope, dangle what you want just within reach and then tear it away. To make you watch it happen. They mean to make you believe you've failed." 

"I have failed," he said. His voice was hoarse. 

"No," she said. "You haven't. Not yet, in any case. One cannot win a rigged game. Agent Watson's fate was never in your hands to begin with." 

"He would never have been involved if not for me."

She made a small sound of distress, looked down. "I realize that this is distressing for you. But you're handing them the key to your own destruction. Playing right into their hands." 

"You think I should walk away from this." 

"It won't change his outcome," she said with a small incline of her head. "But it might change yours." 

Her advice was logical, he knew. A perfectly rational course of action. He could refuse to play their game, could turn away now, could weaponize the hurt he'd already endured. There was anger there, simmering just beneath the shock. It wouldn't take much to nurture that spark, to coax it to life, to bring it to a full-fledged inferno. 

That, or remain sluggish and stunned, paralyzed with grief as he watched John slip away.

Walking away was logical. A course of action he couldn't help but approve of.

But John was—John had been _gone._ He'd been gone, and now he was back, and turning away now, when there was still—

 _Don't say hope,_ he told himself viciously. 

"I've tried to help you where I can," she said, after a long silence. "At times, at a great personal risk." 

"But you haven't helped me," he said. "Not really. You've given me pieces." 

"Pieces are all any of us ever have. You're the genius that's supposed to put it all together." 

He shut his eyes, tightened his hands on the wheel. The leather of his gloves creaked as it stretched over his knuckles. 

"Then give me one more piece," he said. "Tell me how to help him." 

"There is nothing you can do." 

He opened his eyes, pinned her with his gaze. "But there's something that _someone_ can do." 

She tilted her head, watched him.

"I want his name," Sherlock said.

She did not insult him by asking who he was talking about. She went on watching him, her gaze at once assessing and terribly, terribly sad. "That information is worth more than my life." 

"Worth more than John's life?" 

"Some time back, I advised you to enjoy yourself while you still had time to do so. I fear that it may now be too late." 

"For John?"

"For all of us." She favored him with a brief, grim smile. Leaned over to open the door, slipped out into the shadowed darkness of the parking garage.

He watched her progress in the mirror as she melted into the darkness, picking her way with careful, dainty steps, looking every bit the part of a harmless old woman. 

He looked down at his hands on the wheel, flexed stiff fingers. His back teeth ground together and he made an effort to relax his jaw. 

John, who by all rights should have written up his initial field report declaring Sherlock crazy and the X Files project a waste of time, who had instead stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him in the pouring rain, looking down at empty graves and _giggling._

John, who had stayed. 

John, who had gone against all of his own instincts, who had taken a _hostage_ , who had negotiated Sherlock's release from a top secret military facility. 

John, stoic and bleeding on a bridge. 

John, grinning under starlight on a crisp fall night, smile blurred and softened by drink, his arms warm around Sherlock's body, their hands clumsy together on the neck of the bat as they swung. The press of his lips, gentle, unhurried, the very moment fragile and precious. His hands on Sherlock's face, cupping his cheeks. 

_We'll talk later._

Later had never come. 

Later had never come, and John was—John was pale and unmoving in a hospital bed. 

He made a frustrated noise, slapped his hands against the steering wheel. Started the car. Drove away.

*

He walked past Lestrade's secretary without a word, pushed through the door into his office, ignored her irritated protests. 

"I need a name." 

"He ran right past me—" the secretary said, right behind him, her voice apologetic. 

Lestrade looked up from where he sat, winced, rubbed one hand over his face. He waved her off. "It's all right." He turned his attention to Sherlock, looked him up and down. Frowned. "Whose name?" 

"You know who." 

Lestrade sighed heavily, leaned back in his chair. "We've already had this conversation." 

"Unlike last time, I'll not be dissuaded." 

"I don't know his name." 

"You can get it. Or an address. A title. Something. Anything." He was aware that his voice had gone pleading and he cleared his throat, fixed Lestrade with an unblinking gaze. "Some way to find him." 

"Why aren't you at the hospital?" 

Something in his chest wrenched. He blinked.

"I got the call about a half hour ago," Lestrade said. "We've got a team looking into it—they've procured the security footage from the hospital parking lot. I—"

There was something sorrowful and hesitant in Lestrade's voice, and Sherlock wanted to silence it immediately. 

"I'm sorry. I know this must be difficult, but—" 

"His name," Sherlock said, voice clipped. 

"Agent Holmes, you don't just threaten these people. You have no idea what you're dealing with." 

"Then tell me what I'm dealing with," Sherlock snapped. He paused, looked away. His next words emerged hesitant, crawling forth like wounded things: "He's dying." 

Lestrade hesitated, regarding him from behind his desk for a long time. Then he reached up, scrubbed his hands across his face. Groaned. "Agent Holmes, I firmly believe you are responsible for every single one of my gray hairs. I'll—I'll see what I can do. No promises. But." 

"Thank you," Sherlock said. There was something stinging in the back of his throat. He nodded, turned, went out through the door before Lestrade could say anything else. 

*

He approached John's room for the second time, eyeing the nurses with some level of suspicion. No one seemed particularly inclined to throw him out. He did not see Dr. Stapleton. 

He paused in the doorway. 

John was—

John was still and pale and diminished, somehow, under the thin blanket, hooked to wires and tubes and beeping monitors. 

Harry stood next to his bed, eyes shut, dangling a little crystal from a string over his chest. 

"I hear you've been antagonizing the medical staff," she said.

"Who told you that?" 

"John did," she said. "Just now." 

He blinked, eyes darting to the EEG monitor with its dismal lines. 

"If he'd spoken, the EEG would have moved." 

"There are other ways of speaking," she said. She opened her eyes, looked at him. "His soul is here." 

Sherlock snorted, leaned against the wall. He could not quite bring himself to look at John. "Yesterday you were convinced he was dead. That he'd been— that he'd been blown up in some remote field, never to be seen again. Now you can talk to his soul?" 

She gave him a flat look, filled with contempt. Her eyes were red-rimmed, unfocused. 

On her way to drunk, he realized, but not quite there yet. He thought of John, back in the time when they worked together, and how he'd occasionally take a phone call from his sister, shoulders hunched with tension. His discomfort when Sherlock had deduced the source of his tension. 

_Poor choices,_ John had said, once. _Harry makes poor choices._

"You didn't call me," she said. "I know that you were here. The nurses told me that you're—that you were his emergency contact. But I had to hear it from the FBI." 

He looked down. "I had to speak with someone." 

"Right," she said. "More important than being here. More important than—" her voice cracked and she stepped away from the bedside, hands in her hair.

"Yes," he said, because it was the truth. "In this case, yes." 

Harry stared at him, opened her mouth to speak. Her gaze flitted abruptly behind him, attention caught. Sherlock tensed at the sound of approaching footsteps, turned to find himself face-to-face with Dr. Stapleton. 

She looked at him steadily. "Agent Holmes." She looked past him, nodded at Harry. "Ms. Watson." 

There was something in her expression that he didn't like. 

"There's a consulting room just down the hall," she said. "I'd like to speak with you both." 

He followed without a word, very conscious of Harry's footsteps behind him. 

The room was impersonal, small. Two small sofas, dark material, rough, clearly treated to make it water and stain resistant. A little table. A telephone. A box of tissues. 

This was a room for people with no hope, he thought. This was the room where they found out how bad it was going to get. 

He thought of the Housekeper, with her sad eyes and matter-of-fact advice. He'd agreed with her, he knew. He'd agreed with her and had still gone against what she'd said, because it was _John._

And here he was. About to sit down and learn exactly how foolish he'd been.

"When we spoke earlier, Agent Holmes," Dr. Stapleton began. "I told you that we'd run a battery of tests. That we were unable to determine the cause of Dr. Watson's current condition." 

"Has something changed?" 

The look she gave him was not encouraging. "Unfortunately not. He remains unresponsive. Now, the reason I wanted to speak with you both is that we've recently been notified by the FBI of the terms of Dr. Watson's living will." 

Sherlock shut his eyes. 

John, in the basement office, kicking the door shut behind him, two coffees in hand. Saying good morning, or talking about traffic, or rambling about something unimportant that Sherlock generally ignored. It didn't matter what he was saying.

John, who had passed Sherlock the paper cup, and had then hesitated, fiddled with the cup in his hand without drinking. John, who had clearly had something weighing on his mind, some question he'd wanted to ask. 

"Spit it out," Sherlock had said, finally, irritated with the prevarication. 

John had laughed, that humorless little sound he made sometimes, had shaken his head. "Yeah, I should have known that you'd—" he'd shaken his head, and then produced a manila envelope, a small stack of papers. "Would you mind signing this? I've had new terms drawn up for my living will, and it needs a witness. I'd ask Harry, but—" 

And Sherlock had set his coffee down on the desk and stood up, approached John slowly, studied him. Had read the awkwardness of yet another fight with his sister, the conviction that she wouldn't be able to follow through with his wishes. The hesitance and discomfort that surrounded asking Sherlock, outweighed by the simple desire to do so. 

"Living will," Sherlock had said, buying time, glancing at the papers. "Why?" 

"It's a dangerous job," John had said. "And—look. I'm a doctor. I know what—I know what can happen. And I know that there are—there are certain circumstances that—well." 

"Practical," Sherlock had murmured, and he had signed, he had _signed,_ had scrawled his name without a second thought. 

"—and his criteria for terminating life support is quite specific," Dr. Stapleton was saying. Harry's eyes had gone very wide. "The terms state that if the Glasgow outcome scale—" 

"He doesn't want to live in this condition," Sherlock said, his voice flat. 

Harry made a low unhappy sound, shut her eyes. 

Sherlock looked helplessly at Dr. Stapleton. "When he set those terms, he couldn't possibly have foreseen this situation. This isn't—he hasn't been _shot._ You don't even know what's causing this. You can't just—" 

"His wishes are very clear," Dr. Stapleton said. 

He stood, left the room, shaking his head. Let the door slam behind him.  
*

The winter air was cold against his face. His skin felt dry, raw, and he stared numbly up at the sky. 

_The absence of hope,_ he thought. 

He wanted a cigarette. Instead he curled his fist in his coat pocket. Breathed. 

His phone buzzed. 

He lifted it from his pocket looked down at the screen. It seemed distant, unimportant. 

"Agent Holmes?" it was Wiggins's voice in his ear, that flat, unamused voice. "It's—"

"I know who it is," he sighed. "What do you want?" 

"We took the liberty of hacking your partner's medical record." 

He blinked, took the phone away from his ear, looked at the display for a moment. "You what?" 

"We're a little insulted you didn't turn to us right away," Anderson said. "But I suppose you've been distracted." 

"Are you saying that you've found something?"

Silence.

He huffed an irritated breath, ran one hand through his hair. "If you called to tell me _nothing,_ I'd rather you hadn't." 

"We—" 

Wiggins cut in. "I don't know if this is what you expected. But. Something was done to him."

"No kidding," he said flatly. He watched an ambulance pull into the lot, lights turning, disappear around the corner towards the emergency bay. 

"To his blood," Wiggins said. "There's something in his blood. We arranged to have a sample couriered to a friend of ours with certain equipment. Again, we, assumed you wouldn’t mind." 

"Then why didn't it turn up on the hospital tests?" 

"I doubt they'd think to look for this." 

"So—what? Branched DNA again?" 

"Not exactly. I mean, yes," Anderson said. "But it's more than that. Whatever is in his system, it seems to have a mind of its own. It's in control." 

"What do you mean, it's in control?"

"It's shutting his organs down, systematically. It's killing him. If I had to guess, I'd say it's by design." 

He thought again of the Housekeeper, of her insistence that they'd returned John to him only to prolong his suffering, to make him watch as his preordained fate slowly caught up with him. 

"Can you stop it?" 

Anderson let out an unamused bark of laughter. "Stop it? We don't even understand it." 

He breathed out, teeth clenched. 

Then he frowned. "Someone understands it."

He hung up, took three quick steps back towards the entrance, stopped. Spun back. Tugged at his hair. 

A name. All he needed was a name. An address. _Something._ Anything to go on.

"Excuse me," a woman appeared in his line of sight, smiling tentatively at him. 

He scowled, waved her on. 

"Can I bum a cigarette?" she asked, still smiling.

"If I had one, I'd be smoking it," he snapped, stepped around her. _Think,_ he told himself, furiously. _Think._

She shrugged, walked away. Stopped at the entrance, bent down. Looked back at him. 

"Huh. Would you look at that." She stood up holding a pack of cigarettes in her hand. The plastic wrapping crinkled in her grip. 

He turned, narrowed his eyes, watched her. 

She looked at them for a moment, shrugged. "Not my brand." Dropped them back on the ground where she'd found them, continued on her way. 

He watched her go, looked back at the small pack on the ground. After a moment he dove for it, scooping it up, peeling back cellophane to get at the contents within. 

There was a folded scrap of paper, tucked in among the row of cigarettes. He pulled it out with trembling fingers. There was an address, scrawled in an unfamiliar hand. 

His phone buzzed. Harry. 

He hesitated, considered ignoring it. Found he could not. "Yes." 

"They're going to—they're going to do it." 

His blood ran cold. "Now?" 

"There's no point in waiting," she said. "There's no one—no family. No one else to come and say goodbye. Just. Just you, really." 

He thought of the tombstone, of her tear-choked voice and inane advice about _moving on._

"This is inconvenient for you," he said, his tone sharp. "You've already said your farewells, come to terms with it. " _Moved on,_ as you put it. John showing up again, like this, it's an inconvenience to you. You can't just tie a bow around this portion of your life and leave it behind. It's messy. It needs to be dealt with. And—" 

"I AM DEALING WITH IT," she shouted, her voice hoarse in the phone. "I am. Dealing with it. If anything, you're the one who isn't—the one who keeps rambling on about aliens and—and hope. He's dead, Sherlock. There's nothing left of him there, just a shell, and it's selfish to keep him breathing just because—" 

"Oh, nothing left now, is it? Seems you were communing with his soul not long ago." 

He was attracting attention, now, as he strode through the halls, phone clenched tightly in his hand. 

"Sherlock—" 

He hung up, got into the elevator. Emerged into the hallway outside of John's room feeling sick and dizzied and angry. There was an ache in his chest, a dull, twisting hurt.

Harry was at John's bedside, Dr. Stapleton beside her. 

"Is he below the criteria established in his will?" Sherlock demanded, glancing at John, his gaze skittering uncomfortably away. He looked dead. Pale and gray and still, only his chest rising and falling with the hiss of the ventilator. 

Dr. Stapleton nodded slowly, her face sympathetic. "Agent Holmes, discontinuing the respirator does not necessarily mean ending his life. There are cases of patients living for months, even years, following the cessation of mechanical ventilation." 

"You have no answers," Sherlock said. "You've provided no explanation as to why he's here, or what's wrong with him. You can't—you can't do this until you know. He needs to be studied. He needs—"

"He's not evidence," Harry snapped. "He's a person." 

"He's a burden," Sherlock snapped back. "So step away. Tell yourself whatever you want. Keep your tombstone. I'll take responsibility—"

"It doesn't work like that," Harry said. "I'm his next of kin, Sherlock. And I'm saying this is it. We're going to respect his wishes." 

"These are unnatural circumstances. You can't possibly—" 

"I do things wrong, all the time," Harry said. Her voice cracked. "But I'm not going to be wrong about this too. John's already said what he wants. He wouldn't want to be—laid out here, like this. On display. On some level, you have to know that." 

Sherlock tucked his chin in, blew out a breath of air. He very carefully did not look at John. 

"You can't even look at him," Harry said. 

He shut his eyes. He felt untethered, like he was floating away. 

Dr. Stapleton was talking, a quiet, low tone. Explaining.

He did not stay to listen. 

*

The apartment was small, sparsely furnished. 

Not, exactly, the kind of lodgings he imagined would appeal to the head of a secret government. 

He picked the lock easily, slipped inside. There was a television blaring somewhere, explosions and gunshots and screams. 

Good. He hoped the bastard had fallen asleep in front of the TV, that he could sneak up behind him without even being noticed. 

A snick of sound from the corner, a flare of light. A match, touched to the end of a cigarette, briefly illuminating a severe face. 

Stupid. _Stupid._

"I've been expecting you, Agent Holmes," the man said, standing from the wooden chair he'd set in the corner of the room, prowling forward. The tip of his cigarette glowed red between his lips. 

Sherlock drew his gun, aimed, his hand unwavering. He could pull the trigger and feel no remorse, he knew. Not for this man. Not after what he'd done. Not after what he'd _taken._

"Shut up," Sherlock said. He dug in his pocket, flung the photograph at the man's head. "You've been behind this from the start." 

He stooped to pick it up, took another slow drag on his cigarette. His brows raised over pale eyes, his expression almost amused. "Where ever did you find this?" 

"That doesn't matter," Sherlock said. He tightened his grip on the gun. Breathed. "You're going to answer for what you've done." 

"And what is it, exactly, that I've done?" 

Sherlock's phone buzzed in his pocket. He swallowed, ignored it. 

_Dead,_ his mind offered helpfully. _They're calling to tell you it's done, that he's dead. And you, too much of a coward to even look at him. Too weak to stop it. Too useless to help._

"You shouldn't forget that I've made a study in crime," Sherlock said, cold, every word clipped and crisp. "I don't have to kill you right away. I can hurt you." 

"Oh," he said, still amused, voice light. "Look at you, trying to talk tough. It's charming, in its own way." 

"Why John?" 

"You already know why." 

"I want you to say it," Sherlock ground out. His teeth clenched. 

"Because he had to go." 

" _Why._ "

"Because you were losing focus. You needed to be reminded what's at stake." 

Sherlock reeled backwards, mind spinning. He did not lower the gun. That did not sound at all as if they wanted him to stop looking. It sounded as if—

"Why do you care what's at stake?" 

The man pursed his lips, tapped the photograph with the tip of one finger. "I care more than you know. And that's why I saw to it that he was returned to you." 

"He's dying," Sherlock said. _Dead. Dead already. Dead._

His phone buzzed again. 

"So he is," the man said. 

He took a deep breath. "And Agent Brook?" 

"James Moriarty, in the flesh. But you'd started to suspect as much, hadn't you? After all, you'd rather caught his fancy with that stunt at Baskerville last year. He'd been—extremely eager to meet you." 

_You've got his attention now._ Yao, outside the gates. _I wouldn’t feel too comfortable about that._

"You're working with him." 

The man shrugged, took another pull on his cigarette. "In a way. Needs must." 

"Who are you?" 

"Don't you know?" he smiled mysteriously. 

Sherlock whipped forward, snatched the cigarette out of the man's mouth, flung it aside. Savored the brief expression of surprise on his face.

"Let's not forget that I'm the one holding the gun." 

He shrugged, a benign gesture. "I'd offer you a drink, but I don't keep much in. When it became apparent that you wanted to find me, I chose a suitable location, planted rumors of my whereabouts with the right people. I see that the news reached you, although I did rather expect you a few hours earlier." 

"I've been busy," Sherlock said.

"Clearly."

"Talk." 

"There are a good many things to talk about." 

"Choose one. If you bore me, we'll pick a different topic." 

"Our story begins a long time ago," he said. "With a deal with the devil." 

"Maybe skip the dramatics." 

"I'd thought you rather fond of drama, myself," he said. Shrugged. "Suit yourself. Clearly, this does not come as a shock to you." 

"That people like you might collude with extraterrestrials in order to save your own skin? Amazingly, no. It doesn't."

"Yes, well, this particular collusion has, in fact, been a race against time. We pretend to cooperate on the surface. Behind the scenes, work is being done to develop a vaccine against their contagions, to engineer ways to fight back." 

"By experimenting on innocent civilians." 

He shrugged again, fingers fanning out in a bemused gesture. "Better a few unfortunate souls than the entire world, wouldn't you think?" 

"Your vaccine doesn't work." 

His eyes narrowed. "Ah, you're referring to the instance in Bellefleur. You are correct, in that instance, the vaccine did not work. The subjects were allowed to remain infected for too long following the original tests. Part of the infection remained, took hold. Our vaccines are effective, yes, but only within a very limited time frame." 

"You killed them." 

"No. We killed _it._ The human test subjects were an unfortunate result. It had bonded with their DNA. An almost unconscionable oversight on our part that it was allowed to go undiscovered for so long." 

"Right," Sherlock scoffed. "That's what's unconscionable." 

"Agent Watson has been infected with the same substance." 

Sherlock pursed his lips, steadied his hand on his gun. "Is he within the time frame for the vaccine?" 

"I suppose that rather depends on the outcome of this conversation." 

"The branched DNA. In the Bellefleur victims—" 

"Subjects."

"They were victims," Sherlock said. "What was done to them was done against their will." 

"A byproduct of the tests. Nothing harmful on its own. More of a—genetic marker. Identification." 

"I have it." 

He smiled, a slow creep across his face. "Yes. Yes, you do." 

"Why?" 

"You were tested as a child. Of course. Don't be stupid." 

"My brother." 

"Tested as well." 

_What did you think your mother was doing at the State Department? The typing?_ The Housekeeper again, looking at him with eyes sparkling with amusement. 

Had he really been so blind? Had answers been beneath his nose all this time?

"Why was he taken?" 

"He was chosen." 

"Why him and why not me?"

"You were needed for—other things." 

"What things?" 

"Is this really the conversation you want to be having?" he asked calmly, laying his hands flat on the table. "We were discussing vaccines. And what you might do to procure one." 

Sherlock looked down at the table, the photograph tucked under the man's slim fingers. Looked back up at the face, the striking pale eyes, the hooked nose, the high cheekbones. 

"Ah," the man said. "Putting it together now, are we?" 

He stumble-stepped back, shook his head. "Who—" 

"Your mother is very bright, you know. Rose very quickly in her position at the State Department. She met a man of some prominence in the political sphere, married. They had one child. A son. When they divorced, that child remained with his father. She went on to marry again, left to start a family up in Massachusetts. Under the provision that she continue her work, of course. She did such very important work." 

"You're my brother." The words came out half-breathless, but now that he had seen, it was unmistakable. His mother's eyes, staring back at him. 

"Half," the man said, wrinkling his nose. "I began working alongside our mother at the State Department when I was very young. I had a natural aptitude. You know all about natural aptitudes, I believe." 

Sherlock held himself very still, watching the man with a mixture of disgust and fascination. "She never mentioned you."

"No," he said. "I suppose she wouldn't have." 

He shook his head. "I—why are you telling me this?"

"Is it not what you wanted to know?" 

"I want you to help John." 

He sighed, a miserable groaning noise. "Sentiment. I hand you the truth on a silver platter, and you want to brush it aside to talk about the life of one man." 

"Why bring him back?" Sherlock asked. "Why bring him back at all, if you're just going to—if he's just—" 

"Moriarty's decision," he said. "He's taken over the experimental part of our little enterprise. He sent John back to you in this condition because he wants him dead. He wants you to see him die. He wants to break you." 

Sherlock nodded, lip curling. "And you?" 

He smiled. It was an unpleasant expression. "I want you at your best." 

*

Outside, under clear, unforgiving moonlight, he took his phone out of his pocket, looked at his missed texts. 

_Where did you go?_

_He would have wanted you here_

_It's done_

He sucked in a sharp breath, tipped his head back towards the sky, fighting against the sudden heat in his face, the stinging pressure behind his eyes. His heart, so oft ignored and yet recently so painfully active, kicked against his ribs. 

He'd known that this was going to—

He'd known. Of course. He'd known and he'd made the rational choice to stay involved anyway, and—

 _He wants to break you._ Brook. Moriarty. With those sharp dark eyes and the changeable personality and that unnatural keenness, the unexpected cleverness that had caught him by surprise again and again and which he'd not even bothered to pay attention to. 

He'd been distracted. He'd been distracted and John had paid the price, and he hadn't even been able to—

There were more messages on his phone. What else could she possibly have to tell him? Funeral arrangements? For God's sake, he already had a tombstone. 

_He's breathing on his own. Thought you should know._

He—

_No change in his vitals. You should come see him._

_Before he goes._

_He'd want you to._

*

He got off the elevator, went down the hallway. He moved slowly, but directly. Did not make eye contact with the staff he passed. No one stopped him, no one spoke to him. 

There was an almost eerie quiet to the night shift. Monitors beeped, alarms jangled, and nurses went about their duties, but there were no visitors choking up the hallways, no loud phone conversations. 

He went into John's room. There was no sign of Harry.

He hesitated before pulling the little chair up to his bedside. Sat down. Stared. 

John lay still, quiet. Unmoving, save for the gentle rise and fall of his chest. Breathing on his own, in complete defiance of the odds. 

His hand lay against the thin blanket, fingers slightly curled.

His chest rose, fell. Rose and fell. Rose and fell. 

A monitor beeped once, fell silent. 

Sherlock looked up at the screens, the readouts, watched the little blips that meant John's heart was still beating, still thumping steadily in his chest. 

He reached out, slowly, laid his hand on top of John's. His fingers were cold.

"I—" his voice seemed very loud in the close quiet of the room, and he paused, swallowed. "I will confess that I don't see much of a point in being here." 

He glanced around, but there was no one to chastise him, to look scandalized that he'd said something uncomfortably honest or direct.

"You're not responding to stimulus," he said. "I don't think you can actually hear me. And that would suggest that my being here isn't—isn't really for you, but for me. And—"

He looked down at his hand, cupped carefully over John's. Tightened his grip, swept his thumb over paper-thin skin. 

"Well. I don't know if it makes a difference. But. I'm here." 

He sat in silence for some time, John's fingers warming slightly in his grasp. The monitor beeped, and John's chest continued to rise and fall. 

"Baseball," he said, finally, "is a completely ridiculous sport. Do you—do you even realize this? It's just—it's _hours_ of just—just standing around, waiting for someone to slap a piece of horsehide with a stick. And yet people—people seem to love it. They celebrate it. You. You seem to love it. And I don't—I don't quite—" 

He swallowed. His mouth had gone dry, cottony. He squeezed John's hand, felt the faint warmth of those fingers curled against his own. 

"You'll need to wake up," he said. "Because I demand an explanation. Over the last few months, I've made a concerted effort to understand, and—well. I realize it's out of season. But I watched highlight clips. On Youtube. And I've followed certain sports blogs and—and while I can certainly appreciate the attention to detail, I fail to understand _why—_ " 

He cleared his throat, looked away.

"Well. You'll need to explain. Why do they call it the World Series? That's completely nonsensical. There's no involvement from the rest of the world. And I just—I don't understand, John. What it is that people get out of watching what amounts to three plus hours of intermittent physical activity that they couldn't get from simply reading the box score in the papers?" 

He swallowed again, scooted his chair a little closer. The PA system crackled overhead. Someone ran by in the hallway, rubber-soled shoes squeaking. A cart rattled past, cleaning supplies clinking. Someone walked by carrying a fast-food bag, trailing a greasy, salty aroma. 

All of a sudden, it was too much. His senses were overwhelmed, his chest tight, his eyes stinging. 

This could not be happening. He was an adult now, a genius, a master of everything he set his mind to. How could he have failed so spectacularly a second time? 

He'd been irritated when he'd been assigned a partner. He was better off alone, he _hadn't wanted this_ and then John had shown up in the basement, and—well, instead of sending him screaming for the hills as planned, Sherlock had found himself pouring his heart out in a dark motel room while rain lashed against the windows. 

"I didn't want you around," he said, curling his lip as his voice emerged thick and choked. "But you've become essential. I—last month. I went to California. There was a—a cult. Vampires. Or something. I took risks. I did stupid things. Lestrade was very angry. And. If you'd been there. It probably wouldn't have happened. So. Um—" he cleared his throat again. His face was hot. "That just. Proves my point. You're essential. So please. Just—" 

He could no longer speak. Even breathing seemed like something of a challenge, so he shut his eyes, focused on that for a moment. 

Footsteps behind him, whisper quiet against the tile. 

He opened his eyes, breathed out, turned. 

It was a nurse in navy scrubs. He ignored Sherlock, brushed past. Looked at John's vitals on the monitor, wrote something down, pen scratching against paper. 

Sherlock let go of John's hand, rubbed at his eyes. Leaned back in his chair. He was unsure of the time. The hallway was still relatively empty, quiet. 

The nurse withdrew a syringe from his pocket, uncapped it, slipped the needle into the port on John's IV. He worked smoothly, efficiently, without a glance in Sherlock's direction. 

"What is that?" Sherlock asked. 

The nurse ignored him, depressed the plunger. The monitor beeped. 

"What are you giving him?" Sherlock stood up, sudden alarm coursing through him. The nurse was young, pale. His hair was a little too long, his shoes—his shoes were not regulation white. He was wearing athletic sneakers. They were worn. Dirty. Old.

He withdrew the syringe from the port, capped it, dropped it into his pocket. Moved swiftly towards the door, brushing past Sherlock again. 

Sherlock grabbed him by the shoulders, shoved him against the doorframe. "You don't work here. What the hell did you just give him?" 

Behind him, the machines began to scream. 

The man took advantage of Sherlock's brief distraction, squirmed out of his hold, took off at a dead run down the hallway. 

Sherlock moved to follow, but—oh, _Christ_ , John was convulsing on the thin bed, rigid, muscles jerking taut. Moisture leaked out from under his eyelids. 

He hesitated, torn, paralyzed—another moment and he'd miss his chance at answers—and then whirled back towards the bed with a growl, grasped John's shoulders, held on. 

"I need assistance!" he shouted, stabbing at the call button with one finger. "Help! He's—" 

He could hear the start of a commotion at the end of the hall and turned his attention to John instead, bending his head down. John's eyes were screwed up tight in some kind of spasm. His heartrate had spiked. He wasn't breathing. _He wasn't breathing._

"John—" Sherlock said, breathless, helpless. He thought he might be crying. He could not tear his eyes from John's face. Everything was too loud.

Something dribbled out of John's nose. Thick, dark liquid, pooling up above his lip. 

Blood? Was he hemorrhaging? 

It began to trickle from his eyes, his ears. And it wasn't red, not even the tarry darkness of old blood, it was _black._ Black like oil. Black, like—

_I could feel it gushing out of me, out of my eyes, my nose, my mouth._

Jennifer Wilson, huddled in a diner booth, recounting her story. Her eyes, she'd told them. Her eyes had gone black. 

And then there were people flooding into the room, nurses with a cart, a doctor in a sweep of white coat, and he was being forced backwards, pulled away from John and—

"We're going to need you to stand back—" 

"He has a DNR—" 

"What's on his face? What _is_ that?" 

His ears were roaring. His stomach churned, his vision going dim around the edges. He bent over, hands on his knees.

"Someone—" he said, pointing vaguely down the hallway. "He injected—you have to stop—"

The beeps and alarms on the monitor went abruptly and horribly silent. 

One of the nurses was speaking to him, her voice little more than a muffled hum. She put her hand on his arm. He shook her off, staggered up against the wall. 

They weren't even going to try to resuscitate him. That was—those had been John's wishes. 

The nurse was still trying to speak to him. She put her hand on his arm again. He flinched away.

There was a lot of fuss still happening in John's room for someone the medical staff wasn't planning on doing anything for. He wondered if it had to do with the oil. He should—he should probably do something about that. 

That—that was something he should do. 

He stood up, pushed himself off of the wall, brushed past the nurse who was still, _still_ persisting in trying to speak with him. Shoved through the veritable crowd of medical professionals gathered at John's bedside. 

Looked down at John's face. 

Met John's eyes.

His open eyes. Deep blue. Alert. Aware. 

The air rushed out of Sherlock's lungs. He gripped onto the bedrail, staring, _staring_ , not even trusting himself to blink. 

"John," he said. 

John smiled at him. His lips were cracked and dry but curved up nonetheless into a tired little grin. He nodded, just a shift of his head against the pillow, shut his eyes. 

*

He had not slept. 

Still, there was a bounce in his step, a liveliness that he had not felt for a long time.

He'd spent a large portion of the night sitting in the little plastic chair by John's side, not touching him, not speaking, barely even moving. Just watching him breathe, watching him sleep. When Harry had arrived, he'd vacated the room, gone downstairs. Gotten coffee. Wandered the halls. Went outside and watched the sun climb in the sky. 

His phone buzzed, and he looked down at it. 

_He's asking for you._

He dropped his empty coffee cup into a nearby trash can, went back inside. Stood in the lobby for a moment, just looking. 

The three people in the corner were waiting for news on a friend who had gone into labor. They were tired, clearly dressed from the night before, but smiling, jocular. Teasing. 

There was a man, slumped in a chair, his brow furrowed. Working up the courage to visit an ill family member. He'd clearly been sitting there for some time, weighing his options. 

An elderly woman and a little girl. The girl was bright-eyed, clutching a teddy bear clearly intended as a gift.

A woman on her phone, pacing near the door. Snippets of conversation. "—no, I don't think there's much time—you better come now—" 

People, everywhere. A living, breathing spectrum of joy and sorrow, fear and excitement. Lives ending, lives beginning, lives temporarily derailed. 

John, upstairs in a little bed, awake. Against all odds. 

He looked at the teddy bear clutched in the little girl's hands. She was bouncing it on her knee a little bit, squirming in her chair. 

He went through the lobby, into the little glass-walled gift shop. Briefly considered the display of greeting cards (useless platitudes, printed on flimsy cardboard, often displaying a rather horrifying disregard for proper grammar), moved on. He looked at the bears, at the bouquets of fake flowers, the balloons. 

What was expected in this sort of situation? 

His phone buzzed again. Harry, likely, getting impatient. He hadn't responded to her last text. How much time had passed? 

He stopped in front of a rack of discount DVDs, frowned down at them. 

Five minutes later, he was stepping out of the elevator on John's floor, clutching the blue plastic gift shop bag in his hand. He went down the hallway, his gaze skimming over everyone he passed. He was oddly aware of his own heartbeat, an electric thrum in his veins. 

He glanced at a nurse. Caffeine habit, accidentally poured herself a cup of decaf coffee at the start of her shift. Was going to be unreasonably tired and grumpy within the hour, would not understand why. Would worry that she was coming down with a cold. 

He rounded the corner. Stopped in the doorway to John's room. 

Harry was standing by John's bed, speaking to him. She glanced up at the sight of Sherlock, pursed her lips. She looked back down at John, nodded, then brushed by and left the room without another word. 

A slow smile spread across John's face.

Sherlock hesitated a moment longer. He looked down at the bag in his hand. His fingers had tightened around the handle, the plastic digging creases into his skin. 

"How—" his voice emerged rough. He cleared his throat, tried again. "How are you feeling?" 

"I don't remember anything," John said. The smile faded from his face, replaced by an expression of frustration that Sherlock immediately wanted to soothe away. His brows furrowed. 

"That doesn't matter." 

"Of course it matters," John said. He was still frowning. "I—" 

"I brought you a gift," Sherlock said, holding up the bag, even as he internally berated himself for the unnecessary statement. Of course John could see that he'd brought a gift, it wasn't something that needed to be stated, he—

He sighed and handed the plastic bag to John, who withdrew the wrapped DVD with a bemused expression. 

" _Super Sluggers of the Series_ ," Sherlock said helpfully. "A collection of baseball's finest moments. Or—something. I suppose _finest moments_ is something of a subjective opinion." 

John snorted, a smile cracking across his face at last. He shook his head slowly, fondly, and there, _there_ , that was the expression that Sherlock had convinced himself he'd never see again. "I knew there was a reason to live." 

He smiled in return, helpless before John as always. 

His face felt warm, the skin on the back of his neck prickling. The moment stretched on between them, quiet smiles and silence. He looked down, finally, awkward. Studied his shoes. They were worn, in need of polishing. 

"Sherlock," John said. His voice was warm. 

He lifted his head, suddenly panicked. "Your sister terminated the lease on your apartment." 

John blinked, frowned, furrowed up his brow. "What?" 

"The lease. On your apartment." He wondered if he should mention the headstone. Decided that was probably a bad idea.

John shook his head, looked up at the ceiling. He was smiling again, but it was a tense smile, not really a smile at all. "Of course." 

He'd upset John. He hadn't intended—he'd simply—

"I'm sure it can be sorted out," he said, a little desperately. "I don't know if they've rented your unit yet, it hasn't been very long, but if they have, I'm sure you—" 

"Shit," John said. And laughed. It was not precisely a happy laugh, but nor was it particularly bitter. He was shaking his head again. "Of course she—you know, that's exactly the kind of thing she would do. I'm not even surprised. Probably gave all of my things away too, right?" 

"Um," Sherlock said.

John snorted again, rolled his eyes. 

"Actually, I kept them." 

The hard smile disappeared from John's face. He turned back, fixed his full attention on Sherlock. "What?"

"Your things. I kept them. I have everything at my apartment." 

"You kept my things." 

"Yes, that is what I said. I know you've just awakened, but at least make an effort to keep up." He smiled as he spoke, softening the sharp edges of his words. 

"You kept my things," John said again. "Why?" 

Sherlock felt suddenly as though he were beneath a microscope, flayed, exposed, scrutinized. He shifted where he stood, looked away. "I knew you were coming back." 

John did not respond. After a long moment of uneasy silence, Sherlock lifted his head, met his gaze. John's face had gone quite serious. His lips were pursed, his eyes damp. 

He took an abortive step forward, feeling clumsy and out of place, uncertain, tentative. He had no idea what was expected of him in this situation, what was welcome, what was not. He wanted to crawl into the bed next to John and cling to him until the last several months faded away to distant memories, little more than indistinct fragments of bad dreams. 

John seemed to sense his distress and held out his hand, a small beckoning gesture. 

Sherlock breathed in, took a step forward, then another. Sat on the edge of the bed, the thin mattress sinking under his weight. Took John's cool hand in his. John's fingers curled up to twine with his, his hand _alive_ , a startling contrast to the limp appendage he'd cradled the night before.

He shut his eyes. 

John's other hand came up, stroked gently down his back. His nerves sparked to life, painfully and wonderfully aware of every point of contact. 

"I have a room that I never use," Sherlock said, unaware that he was going to speak until he had already done so. "It's—right now it's sort of—storage. For files. Odds and ends. I could—well. You could. If you wanted—you could. Stay." 

"At your place," John said. 

"Yes." 

John laughed again, tipped his head back against the pillow, shut his eyes. He was smiling. "Yeah, all right." 

Sherlock sucked in a breath. "Oh." 

"If that's all right." 

"Of course it's all right. I wouldn't have asked if it weren't all right—" 

"Yeah," John said, and laughed again. "I know. Fine. Yes. I'll move into your apartment." 

Sherlock looked down at his hands. The corner of his mouth was threatening once more to tug up into a smile. "I play the violin." 

"What?" 

"I play the violin. When I'm thinking. And sometimes I don't talk for days." 

"You talk all the time. Never shut up, really." 

"I—" 

"It makes sense, really," John cut in. "You call me at all hours of the night as it is. Far more convenient this way." 

"Mm. Now I can just knock on the door." 

"Or. You know," John looked at him, moistened his lips, looked away. His face had gone slightly pink. "You could. Not knock." 

"Oh," Sherlock said. This time he made no effort to quash the smile that threatened. He looked down at John's hand, clasped tightly in his own. He tugged gently, hesitantly, and when John offered up no resistance he brought the hand up to his mouth, pressed his lips against it. 

John made a pleased sound, tugged backwards a little bit, and Sherlock allowed himself to tip sideways, careful, so very careful as he lowered his forehead to press against John's. He breathed him in, stale hospital smell, sweat, but still John, unmistakable.

"You need to rest," he said, quiet, so quiet. John's breaths were puffing gently against his lips, warm evidence that he was alive, alive, alive. 

"Yeah," John agreed, eyes half-lidded, drowsy. "I do. I just—I wanted to—" 

Sherlock shut his eyes, tipped forward ever-so-slightly, closed the distance between them. Pressed his lips to John's. Cupped the side of his face in the palm of his hand. 

John made a soft noise, shifted under the blanket, tightened his fingers on Sherlock's other hand. His lips were dry, slightly chapped, and they parted against Sherlock's, tentative, wondering. 

He pulled away slightly, suddenly unable to breathe, redirected, buried his face against the side of John's neck. Hunched up to avoid dropping his full weight on John's body, not wanting to jostle him. Breathed him in. He had gone warm and cold, the ache in his chest twisting. He thought he might be crying, and that—that didn't make sense. Everything was fine now. Why would he be—?

"Hey," John murmured, squeezing his fingers with one hand, the other coming up to run in soothing motions along Sherlock's back. 

He took another shuddering breath, pressed his lips against John's neck, held them there, half kiss and half desperate bid to be _closer._ He was trembling. He thought John might be trembling too. 

"I thought—" he said, his voice barely more than a whisper, lips barely moving against John's neck. 

"I know," John said, just as quiet. His hand kept up its soothing stroking. 

He calmed, slowly. Breathed against John, breathed _with_ John. Finally, he drew back, slow, gentle. 

John's eyes fluttered open. He smiled. 

Sherlock tried to smile back. Based on the resultant expression on John's face, he thought it likely that he'd failed horribly.

John shut his eyes, shook his head. Fond. Still fond. Even after all of this. After everything. Still fond. 

"Baseball," he said, his voice starting soft, edging into scolding. "Is so much more than slapping a piece of horsehide with a stick. I can't _believe_ that's all you got out of it." 

Sherlock blinked. Froze, with his one hand still cradling the side of John's head, the other worrying at the knobbly blanket. 

"You heard me," he said, his voice slow, stunned. 

"Yeah, I—" John shrugged. "I did. And we are going to have a very long conversation about this when I'm a little bit more awake. The vampires, too. Because that's—not all right, Sherlock." 

Sherlock snorted, gratified to see that John was smirking a little bit too. He nodded. Squeezed John's hand. John's eyelids fluttered, closed.

 _We'll talk later,_ he thought, and for the first time since stumbling past the crime scene tape into the wreckage of John's apartment, the line felt like a promise. 

*

 

_March_

 

"Agent Watson," Lestrade said. "It's good to have you back." 

He was smiling.

Sherlock shifted in his chair, glanced over at John.

John, in his suit and tie, badge clipped neatly onto the lapel of his jacket. John, who was still a little too pale, his eyes a little too shadowed, but who seemed otherwise fit and healthy and well. Alive. 

"It's good to be back, sir." 

Lestrade cleared his throat, looked down at his desk. "There are some final items I wanted to tie up before you resume your assignment." 

Sherlock nodded, folded his hands. Waited. 

"The man you claim injected Agent Watson with an unknown substance," Lestrade said. "The one disguised as a nurse. He was found in an alley three miles from the hospital." 

"Alive?" Sherlock asked, although he was certain he already knew the answer. 

"No," Lestrade said. "He'd been shot. Execution style. Police were unable to locate the weapon, nor any trace of the syringe you claim he pocketed." 

"Mm. And let me guess. They were mysteriously unable to find anything at all strange about the substance that Agent Watson excreted moments after injection." 

He was aware of John's wince beside him, an almost full-body flinch. He frowned, shot him an apologetic look. 

"Preliminary lab results came back as motor oil," Lestrade said. "Nothing more exotic than that." 

"Motor oil. In a hospital critical care ward." 

"The current preferred theory is that the suspect was in the hospital looking to feed a drug habit." 

"And he just happened to pour motor oil on a patient in a critical care ward." 

Lestrade grimaced. "When I said it was the preferred theory, I didn't mean to imply that I preferred it." 

"They're covering it up," Sherlock said. "Can't you see—?" 

"They have covered it up," Lestrade said. "It's done. There's nothing _to_ see. There are some battles that can't be won, and I'm telling you that this is one of them. You're both alive. You're well. And you both still have jobs. I think you should be satisfied with that outcome." 

John made a sharp sound, almost laughter, not quite. 

"So that's it, then," he said. "No further inquiry into what happened to me. Maniac clocks me on the head, drives me to the top of a mountain. Leaves me with a three month gap in my memory. And I'm supposed to be _satisfied_ with that outcome?" 

"No," Lestrade said. He looked weary. "No. But what you should do, you and Agent Holmes both, is go back to work. And keep looking. If anyone is going to find the answers, it's the pair of you. I believe that. I—" he swallowed, looked down at his hands. 

"Every answer leads to more questions," Sherlock said.

"Then keep asking." 

Sherlock stared at him for a long moment, wanting to shout, to argue, to fight. But he thought about a folded slip of paper amongst cigarettes, the chance for the conversation, and what that must have cost. He thought about the kid with his syringe, and who must have sent him. How his salvation had come at the final hour, just when things had seemed bleakest.

He nodded. Stood. Went for the door. 

Behind him, John hesitated. Stood slowly. Followed. 

In the hallway, they walked side by side towards the elevator. Their shoulders brushed. 

"I need to know what happened to me, Sherlock," John said quietly. 

"I know." 

He thought about the photograph, his mother's stern face. Sherrinford, screaming for help in the white light. The mysteries of his own DNA, the confusing and terrible truth he'd read in the smoking man's pale, familiar eyes. John, in his hospital bed, convulsing.

"John," Sherlock said, as the elevator dinged, the doors sliding open before them. "The truth is out there. And we will, we _will_ find it." 

He thought of the Housekeeper, of her ominous predictions of war, invasion. Of men with changing faces, of doctors growing clones in green tanks. Of Henry Knight, his mind cracking and splintering under an onslaught of experimental drugs. Of a group of scared twentysomethings, dying one by one because of something that had been _done_ to them. Done to them the way it had been done to him, to John. To others. 

John looked at him, his shoulders back, his face stoic. Still the soldier, even in his FBI regulation suit, his boring tie, his clipped-on badge. 

Their eyes met. 

John nodded, once, a short sharp jerk of his head. "Into battle, then." 

They stepped together into the elevator.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And... that's all she wrote. Time for me to retreat into whatever the writer version of hibernation is. 
> 
> This is by far the longest and most complex thing I've ever written. I wanted to take a moment to say thank you to all of you who cheerleaded and commented along the way-- your enthusiasm and encouragement was so overwhelmingly wonderful and so very appreciated. I don't think I ever would have been able to keep up the momentum necessary to maintain this kind of pace without the incredibly enthusiastic response to each new chapter. 
> 
> I'm so fondly nostalgic for the X Files, and it has been such a delight to find others in the Sherlock fandom who have similar fond memories. This entire project has been a labor of love, and I can only hope that I did both shows justice.
> 
> I realize that, much like the X Files itself, there are some unanswered questions left behind (although I do hope that the core mystery of this particular arc was resolved satisfactorily.) While some of these unanswered questions can be swept aside with a vague "the truth is out there," I _do_ have plans to continue writing in this universe. I've got a whole 'nother story arc outlined, with probably another 10 episodes or so. (There are so many classic episodes that I want to get to! Bad Blood! Detour! An Abominable Bride/Triangle mashup!) So. That's on my radar as an eventuality. Once I'm done intermittently hibernating and screaming about new canon. 
> 
> Thank you again for your support and enthusiasm. If you had half as much fun reading this as I did writing it, I'll count that as a success. :)
> 
> I hope you all have a happy and healthy New Year. Fingers crossed that Series 4 is everything we hope for and more!
> 
> As always, please feel free to stop by and say hi on [Tumblr](http://www.discordantwords.tumblr.com/)
> 
> *
> 
> If you haven't already seen the STUNNING artwork created by Khorazir for this story, please click the link!
> 
>  
> 
> ["I Want to Believe" & "Hips Before Hands"](https://khorazir.tumblr.com/post/157373310748/i-want-to-believe-and-hips-before-hands)
> 
>  
> 
> "I Want to Believe" [lineart](https://khorazir.tumblr.com/post/157207315428/i-want-to-believelineart-of-the-second)
> 
> "Hips Before Hands" [lineart](https://khorazir.tumblr.com/post/157036740848/hips-before-hands-lineart-of-my-first)

**Author's Note:**

> My apologies to the entire field of medical science. This fic is going to be chock-full of hand-wavy X-Filesy paranoid pseudoscience. The X Files exists in a world where Scully can identify, synthesize and mass produce a vaccine to halt an ongoing apocalyptic plague in…like… a few hours? (At least I think that's what happened in the reboot. I've blocked a lot of it out.) 
> 
> In any case, complete realism won't apply. I promise to do my best to make sure that, at the very least, all of my ridiculous hand-wavy paranoid pseudoscience ties back into itself in some semblance of cohesion.


End file.
